


anyone can fall

by bazzystar



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pacific Rim (2013), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Friends to Lovers, Giant Robots, Kaiju (Pacific Rim), M/M, Neon Genesis Evangelion - Freeform, Pacific Rim - Freeform, Pacific Rim AU, Pining, Sexual Content, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2018-09-02 22:31:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8685820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazzystar/pseuds/bazzystar
Summary: "When you drift with someone, you feel like there's nothing to talk about. I just don't wanna regret all the things that I never said."(or: Steve and Bucky are drift-compatible, what that means, and everything that comes after.)





	1. before

The first kaiju hit the earth the same year Steve Rogers was born.   
SHIELD called that one Lucifer. They said you could see it from Earth for days before it finally hit, just shy of the North Star, a black-ringed point of light like the eye of some terrible god.

The first impact was like a nuclear bomb, they said. Lucifer hit the earth and its body exploded, and the resulting electromagnetic shock wave destroyed half of Europe. The parts of the body that they managed to recover - the parts that didn’t liquefy instantly into an oozing, reeking, acidic sludge - didn’t share a genetic sequence with anything in the known world.  
From what they could tell, though, Lucifer was most closely related to humans.

The second one came out of the ocean five years later, onto the beach at Coney Island, the day after Steve’s birthday. That one was called Attar. Attar surfaced about ten miles from the shore, its crested head breaking the surface of the water and overturning an oil tanker. SHIELD dispatched the most advanced fighters they had, piloted by the best, and they lost six planes before they finally brought it down. It was almost three miles inland by that point, and behind it was nothing but smoking ruins.

The next two came within the same year, three years later. One came from above, and instead of smashing into the earth as Lucifer had done it slowed its descent with a pair of wings, wings in the loosest and most terrible sense, ragged appendages unfurling like a black cloud across the sky and dragging the stars down with it. It stopped above the ocean, closed its wings and dove, and when it resurfaced six months later it wasn’t alone. That was the one that took Nick Fury’s eye, the winged one. Phaethon.

By the time Steve was fifteen, the division of SHIELD responsible for dealing with the kaiju had developed the first jaeger models. Fury and Danvers were the first pilots, but after Fury lost his eye they got put on desk duty. They became the handlers, the marshals. The recruiters. They knew what to look for in pilots.

SHIELD couldn’t instate a draft, even though they needed to. The jaegers needed two pilots each, two people that could share each other’s minds, and it wasn’t possible to draft that. They put out a call for siblings, lovers, close friends. Anyone who felt that they were only complete with another person. They didn’t know how to force a neural bridge, how to break down the barriers between minds. They didn’t know how to engineer the kind of deep emotional and physical bond that was needed to successfully pilot - to become one mind, to drift.

At least, at first they didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been kicking around in my head long enough that I decided it's finally happening. It's mostly a Pacific Rim-type giant robot AU, but with more of the elements of Neon Genesis Evangelion that I hoped Pacific Rim would have. That means we're playing a little fast and loose in terms of bot mythology, so please don't let that hang you up if at all possible. All will make sense (I can only hope). This one has an outline, also, so there will be a schedule! I'm hoping weekly updates. Anyway, comments and feedback are welcome and appreciated and requested, quite frankly, because I'm insecure and because I want to talk about giant robots with you. Okay! Thank you! Bye!


	2. one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meet-'n'-greet. Pilot trials, part one.

He’s clipped into a harness, dangling about a hundred and eighty feet above the cavern floor, when the dark-haired woman zips into view and stops neatly next to him. She pulls his left ear protector away from his head.

“We’re moving you up to B-level tomorrow,” she says. “Bring your things.”

Before he can ask her what she means, before he can say anything at all, she lets the ear protector slap back against his head and drops out of view.

He doesn’t get it right away. He’s _this close_ to figuring out why the Spider keeps flexing its fingers without any input from the pilot, and-

He pulls his head out of the machine so fast that he whangs it on the edge of the cavity he’s made. He barely feels it.

_He’s going to pilot trials._

A year and a half on the base, and he’s finally going to pilot trials.

 _B-level_. He tries to crush the rising swell of pride, but it climbs up his throat anyway and he ducks his face behind the open panel to hide his smile.

* * *

“This is a body bag,” says the dark-haired woman. Hill, he thinks her name is. “Your name goes here, and the name and contact information for your next of kin goes here. Questions.”

She’s asking if anyone has any, he’s pretty sure, but the way she says it there’s definitely not a question mark after it. She looks at each of them pointedly.

No one has questions.

“Wear something you can move in,” she says shortly, pivots on her heel, and strides out of the room.

Steve looks at his body bag and tries to imagine himself lying inside of it. He writes his name slowly, carefully, in big block letters.

“Very legible. Gold star.”

He looks up into a pair of gray-blue eyes framed by a laughably disheveled sweep of hair. “Yeah,” he says. For a moment he thinks maybe something else is going to come out of his mouth, some breezy Han Solo cool-guy type line, and then he sneezes.

_Wonderful, Steven. That’s why you’ve got people lining up around the block to be your copilot._

The guy waits another moment. Steve wishes desperately to sink into the earth. The guy’s eyebrow arches ever so slightly. “‘Kay, then.” He slings his bag onto a cot across the room and starts rifling through it.

Someone sits down next to Steve. Her face is way closer than he expects it to be when he turns, and he yelps and jerks back. Han Solo is rolling in his carbonite grave.

She smiles. “It’s just a scare tactic.”

He looks at the shaggy-haired boy involuntarily.

“No, no,” she says, “the body bag. Standard army stuff. It’s not really that dangerous.”

“No, I’m pretty sure people die during trials,” drawls a blond boy in a purple shirt. “Like, most of ‘em.”

She ignores him. “I’m Sharon.”

“Steve.”

“My aunt was in this program. It’s really not that bad, I swear. It’s mostly weird psychological stuff. She told me you have to _dance._ ”

“Why would we have to dance?” Purple shirt again.

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Coordination?”

“Synchronization.”

They all turn to look at the dark-haired guy. The corner of his mouth quirks up. “Dancing is all about anticipating someone else’s movements, being able to absorb them, move with them.” The eyebrow arch again. “It’s not _not_ like fighting.”

“You sound like you have experience.”

He doesn’t answer her. Instead he gets up off the cot, takes hold of his left sneaker, and stretches his leg out until his foot is above his head. He looks so matter-of-fact about it, like he’s not even bragging. Just, _yes, I do have experience, in fact I can fold my body in half, would anyone like a cup of coffee_ -

“Ew,” Sharon says. “Put it down.”

“Jealous.”

“I’m Clint, by the way,” says the purple-shirt kid, apparently tired of being left out. “Can we do a name go-around? And can we do it slowly?” He taps his ear and Steve sees the wire of a hearing aid. “Unless you want me to nickname you all. Which I’m more than willing to do.”

“Absolutely not. Already got a nickname.” The dark-haired boy brings his foot down, sinks into a stretch. “Bucky.”

“What kind of a name is Bucky?”

“What kind of a name is Clint?”

Steve clears his throat. “I’m Steve, in case you didn’t hear-” _Hearing aid._ Shit. Fuck. “Uh, I mean, I had mentioned-” He can feel Bucky’s smirk without even looking at him. “I’m Steve,” he finishes. He is truly crushing it today.

“I’m Sam, and this is Riley.” The two guys at the far corner of the room, who clearly know each other from outside training. Sharon wrinkles her nose at them. “No fair,” she says. “Pre-existing friendship.”

Sam waggles his eyebrows at her. “The Falcon will be mine,” he says mock-imperiously.

“Ours,” Riley corrects him, slinging his arm around Sam’s shoulders.

Steve feels a brief little flare of hurt and looks away, digging into his bag and hoping his loneliness doesn’t show on his face.

 _You're not here for friends, Rogers_ , he reminds himself. _You're here to be a pilot_. When a small voice inside his head tries to remind him that the two aren't mutually exclusive he ignores it.

He looks up to see Bucky watching him, his face unreadable. He stands abruptly.

“We should go,” he mutters. “Hill’s waiting.”

* * *

The first phase of trials is combat. Fury and a woman Steve can only assume is Carol Danvers stand and watch as Hill throws them each a short stick.

“Rogers, Carter,” she snaps, nodding toward the center of the room. “Fight.”

Sharon takes him by surprise, as small as she is. She gets three points in before he manages to fight her to a draw, his foot lightly on her chest as Hill counts. She does better against Clint, who then beats Steve handily. Bucky fights like a wildcat, low and slinking, pinning Sharon in two and Clint in three. Sam and Riley fight, demonstrating ‘ideal drift compatibility’, taking almost five full minutes before the first point is scored.

Then it’s Steve’s turn to fight Bucky.

They’re both tired now. They circle each other, catching their breath, trying to get an angle. Bucky’s eyes are locked on Steve’s, pupils hugely dilated. He looks almost scared.

Steve lunges.

The fight is like a living thing, breathing, and he can feel it all around them as they move across the floor. He is vaguely aware of pain, somewhere at the edges of him, but inside this space there is only the fight. Only the two of them. He weaves and parries, ducks and jabs, the _clack_ of the sticks glancing off each other faintly audible in the distance. He knows it isn’t possible, but he feels like he hasn’t looked away from Bucky’s face this whole time. He feels him breathing, knows when he’s going to strike and where, senses his movement before it happens-

Suddenly they’re tumbling across the floor, the sudden rush of noise loud in his ears. Bucky slams him onto his back, sitting astride him, and raises his hand. Their eyes are still locked. Bucky raises his hand-

“Five,” Hill’s voice rings out. “Stop.”

Bucky sways. His eyelids flicker. His hand drops to his side.

He lurches sideways off of Steve, gets heavily to his feet, and walks out of the chamber.

He doesn’t look back.

Steve lies there in the middle of the floor, chest heaving. Fury’s face swims into view above him.

“Now that,” he says approvingly, “was drift compatibility.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember when i said there was a schedule? lol me neither. i spent all of today in a daze thinking about this so i am just going ahead and posting more!! sorry!! things will stabilize once i am less peeling my skin off about this. anyway, this is the first real chapter. bucky definitely danced ballet. it's all fine and good and great and also fine. i have nothing against the actress who plays sharon irl but i do definitely 110% always imagine her as the girl who plays lancelot in kingsman. comments and feedback are welcome as always, thank you for being here, goodbye now <3


	3. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is cryptic. The second trial is announced.

He catches up to Bucky in the hallway.

He rounds the corner and Bucky's slumped against the wall, shoulders shaking, and Steve can’t see his face. He hesitates for a moment and then turns away, back toward the trial chamber. He feels cold all over.

The door of the chamber is locked, and none of the other candidates are in sight. His stomach twists and he puts a hand on the wall, steadying himself. Then he walks toward the recreation area in the center of the compound.

Had he done something wrong? During the fight, had he - had he hurt Bucky? He can’t remember it clearly. He tries, but it’s just a blur of motion and reflex. He thought that was good, had thought they were supposed to lose themselves like that - hadn’t Fury been pleased? He flings open the door to the courtyard and takes a deep breath, letting the cold air shock his lungs. The resulting cramp sends him into a full-body shudder and he gasps quietly, sucking in shallow breaths as he adjusts.

“Fucking asthma,” he mutters, kicking a pinecone. “Fucking - fucking -”

He realizes that he’s on the verge of tears. He jams the heel of his hand into his eye, furious with himself. He can feel dried blood crusted underneath his nose.

He sits down on one of the little metal benches bolted to the ground out here. For a state-of-the-art facility, the recreation area isn’t much more than a glorified yard, and not a good one at that. It looks like somewhere a sad dog would be chained up. He slumps over onto the bench, pressing his cheek against the cold metal. It feels good on what he’s sure will be a black eye. He closes his eyes and wonders if he made a mistake coming here.

He doesn't know why he's so emotional. Just because Bucky seems upset with the trial results? It doesn’t matter if he’s upset. Fury was happy, and that’s what matters, right? So Bucky doesn’t want to be his copilot. That’s fine. Surely there’s another candidate he’ll be compatible with. Just because it didn’t happen during combat doesn’t mean it won’t happen. They have all sorts of ways to create a neural bridge now.

“Fuck him,” he mutters to himself. “Doesn’t matter.”

The door shuts quietly, the _click_ barely audible in the small, shadowy space.

He sits back up, gets to his feet as quickly as he can. He throws open the door back into the building and sees a flick of dark hair disappearing around the corner.

“Hey!” he yells, breaking into a jog. “Bucky?”

He turns the corner to see Bucky darting into a different hallway.

“Bucky!” he yells again.

He pulls up short as he enters the hallway, almost slamming right into the other boy’s chest.

 _Christ, he’s big_ , he thinks as he staggers back. Not much taller than him, but almost twice as broad.

“What kind of dance do you even _do?”_ he blurts before he can stop himself.

Bucky’s mouth twists wryly. “That’s your first question?”

Steve manages a laugh. “I didn’t plan for it to be. I got-” He gestures at Bucky’s… everything. “You scared it out of me.”

Bucky’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Didn’t mean t’scare ya.”

“Did... “ Steve hates how nervous he sounds, hates how nervous he _is_. “Did something happen during the trial?”

“What d’you mean?”

“I don’t know. I thought - I guess I thought it went well, but then you-”

“That why you were saying ‘fuck him’ out in the courtyard?”

Steve feels his face heat up. “I didn’t know you were out there.”

“Yeah, I came to apologize.”

“Well, if you hadn’t fuckin’ run away-”

“Listen.” Bucky’s voice drops low and dangerous. “Don’t make me regret comin’ to find you.”

He puts his hands on Steve’s shoulders and leans closer to him.

“I’m sorry I left. You didn’t do anything wrong. It was a good fight. But you need to know something.”

Steve’s looking at his mouth as he says, “I’m not gonna be your copilot.”

It takes a moment to sink in, and in the time it takes for that to happen Bucky puts his hand on Steve’s chest and pushes him backward, gently, until his back hits the wall, and then slips around him and walks away.

Steve watches him go, and after a few minutes he slides down the wall until he’s sitting, knees drawn to his chest. He feels his chest tighten up and then seize, and this time he can’t stop the tears from coming.

When he opens his eyes again it’s morning, which he only knows because the carefully modulated lights of the Shatterdome are at their sunrise setting. He gets up, wincing as the blood rushes back into his feet.

Everyone is still asleep when he pushes open the door to the dormitory. He tries not to look at Bucky’s cot as he makes his way carefully to his own bed and slips beneath the thin blanket. Clint mumbles something as he rolls over in the bed next to Steve’s, and then he’s asleep again.

Sharon shakes him awake. “Steve,” she hisses. “Get up.” She flicks his cheek.

“Whmmm,” he murmurs. “No.”

She shoves his shoulder. “Get up! Fury’s coming.”

He groans and rolls sideways, slithering down until he’s puddled on the floor. “Look what you made me do.”

She digs her toe underneath him, flexes it up into his ribs. “Ah, shit, sorry,” she says as he starts coughing. “Well, at least you’re up.”

They get dressed in silence, all of them turned toward their own beds as they pull on their jumpsuits. The door slams open and it’s Danvers, not Fury, and she looks angry. Steve darts a glance at Bucky, He’s rolling his hands into fists, loosely clenching and unclenching them as they hang at his sides. He looks nervous.

Danvers folds her arms. “How are we all feeling about yesterday’s trial?”

Clint opens his mouth.

“Rhetorical, Barton.”

He shuts his mouth.

“Your results were mostly fine,” she continues. “I’m not completely dissatisfied. We have preliminary pairings and we’ll be moving forward with those and adjusting as we need to.”

She unfolds her arms and looks at them all, her gaze softening a little. “The next trial is one of the less pleasant. You’re aware that the jaegers have external power sources, yes?”

Clint clears his throat. She narrows her eyes at him and continues.

“The jaegers are tethered to massive engines here in the Shatterdome. The tethers are almost a mile long. Once the jaeger breaks free of the tether it has a limited power supply.”

A vein pulses in Bucky’s neck, and Steve imagines he’s clenching his teeth. As if he can hear his thoughts, Bucky shifts his weight and their eyes meet. Steve drops his gaze to the floor, but not before a single thought zips through his head - _he looks so sad_.

“If the jaeger gets below five percent power remaining, it shuts down in order to protect the pilots,” Danvers is saying. “It locks itself down. No one can get in or out until SHIELD recovers the unit and brings it back to the Dome.”

Steve is trying to follow what she’s saying, but he can’t focus.

“Sometimes recovery takes days.” Her voice is dark. “You’re in the cockpit for days.”

Sharon sucks in a sharp breath.

“Comms are dead. Screens are dead. You have no connection to the outside world. You have your copilot and nothing else.”

“Are you not even in the drift?” Sharon’s voice verges on shrill. Danvers almost looks sad as she answers. “No, Carter. The bridge is powered by the jaeger.”

Sharon’s mouth trembles. “What’s the next trial?”

“Isolation,” Danvers says.

His stomach drops.

“You’ll be put into the state of suspended animation that the jaeger induces in pilots at low power,” she says. “You won’t feel hunger, any kind of bodily urges. You’ll have extremely low energy. You won’t really be able to move at all, nor will you want to. All you will have is your copilot, and you will have to keep each other sane in the dark interior of a powered-down jaeger.”

“What happens when the jaeger runs all the way out of power?” Steve asks. “What happens if it’s not recovered before the power runs all the way down?”

“Then you die of thirst,” Danvers says simply. “But that won’t happen. SHIELD has never recovered a jaeger too late.”

“How long is the trial?” Bucky’s voice scrapes out of him like it hurts.

“Three days.”

Steve tries to catch his eye, but his head is bowed and a curtain of hair hides his face. His stomach sinks even lower. _Why does he hate me so much?_

Danvers’ gaze is cool and measured as she looks at each of them. “The trial starts tomorrow,” she says at last. “You have today to rest, to get as much physical exercise as you’d like, and to prepare mentally.”

She thinks, then nods briskly. “Thank you.”

The door slams behind her, the _clang_ echoing in the silence. Tears are running down Sharon’s face. Bucky looks almost as miserable as she does.

“Aw, Carter, it won’t be so bad,” Clint wheedles, sitting down next to her. “Silence isn’t so bad.” He nudges her gently. “I’ll teach you sign language.”

She glares at him. “We won’t be able to see each other.”

His face falls, and he puts a hand on her back. “We’ll figure it out, Sharon,” he says quietly. “It’ll be okay.”

Sam and Riley are huddled in the corner, talking quietly and animatedly. Steve looks at Bucky.

“It seems like we’re going to be together.”

“It seems that way, doesn’t it.”

The corner of his mouth tips up and it’s not quite a smile, but it makes the sadness in his eyes recede just a little. Steve tries not to think about what he must look like when he smiles for real.

“Maybe it won’t be so terrible,” he offers. “I’m not _that_ bad.”

The smile dims and Bucky forces a hollow little laugh. “Yeah.” He fiddles with the zipper on his jumpsuit. “'m gonna go to the, uh-” He jerks his head toward the door and then leaves without another word.

Clint rolls his eyes. “Well, he’ll be a bundle of joy in isolation,” he says drily. “Sorry, Rogers.”

Sharon wipes her nose. “Should we get something to eat? Maybe they’ll let us go off-base today since we’re - you know.”

Sam flops down on Steve’s bed. “Let’s do it. I could eat.” Riley flings himself down too, bouncing Sam off the bed. “Pancakes,” he says. “No, wait. Is there one of those Brazilian meat places anywhere around here?”

* * *

They can’t find a Brazilian meat place, whatever that is, but they do find a taco place that’s having a pig roast, somehow, and they eat pork covered in slices of pineapple with their hands in the sun. Steve gets some in a little to-go box and Sam elbows him in the ribs, says _trying to impress Barnes, huh_ , and Steve trips over the curb as he realizes he didn’t know Bucky’s last name.

He leaves the little box on Bucky’s bed, thinks about leaving a note, doesn’t leave a note, then ducks back into the room to leave a note just so he knows it’s for him. _Hope you like pineapple. Otherwise this’ll be a shitty last meal. Steve._

He sits in the courtyard and draws, the sun warm on the top of his head, blowing on his fingers every so often to keep warm. He’s doing basic figure sketches, letting his mind wander, when a shadow falls over his lap.

“Jesus, you got it bad,” Sam says brightly. “Are you always this obvious?”

Steve looks at him, puzzled. Sam reaches down and taps the sketchbook. “It’s Barnes, right? That fuckin’ smirk is hard to miss.”

He looks down at the page and, sure enough, amidst all the little gesturing figures is a rough sketch of Bucky’s face. He feels the blood rush to his cheeks and slaps his hands over the drawing.

“Look, it’s cool,” Sam says, sitting down next to him. “The guy has a definite vibe, I get it.”

Something sharp lances through him. “Maybe you should be his copilot.”

“Don’t be a shit.”

He sighs. “Sorry. It just sucks that he hates me, you know? I don’t know how we’re gonna pilot.”

“Look, I don’t know how piloting works any more than you do. Riley and I are fuckin’ blood brothers, you know? But maybe we’ll kill each other inside a jaeger. I don’t think that’ll happen, but - I’m just saying.” Sam makes a vague gesture. “Maybe it doesn’t matter that he hates you.”

The sharp thing digs and twists. “So you think he hates me, too.”

“Rogers. Buddy. I do not know.” He draws out each word. “I’m just saying you don’t know what’ll happen.”

He stands up, holds out a hand to pull Steve up. “Let’s see if they have ping-pong somewhere in this place.”

He closes the sketchbook on Bucky’s unfinished face and lets Sam pull him back into the building.

* * *

Riley finds them two games deep in something that’s almost ping-pong, albeit with a lot more blinking lights and holograms than Steve feels are strictly necessary. He lets them have the table and wanders back upstairs to the dorm.

He opens the door to see Bucky lying on his bed and freezes. He’s reading, and he doesn’t look up. Steve makes his way carefully toward his own bed, tucking the sketchbook carefully into his bag before he sits down and starts unlacing his boots.

“Thanks,” Bucky mumbles into the book. “For the food.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “Yeah. No, it’s - yeah.”

He kicks his boots under the bed and lies down.

“There was extra, so.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. Steve hears a page turn.

“Yeah, it was. Good. Thanks.”

He makes what he hopes is a noncommittal sound. Bucky turns another page.

“It’ll be fine,” he says after a while. Steve rolls over to face in his direction. “What?”

Bucky closes the book and looks at him. “The trial. It’ll be fine.”

His mouth is suddenly too dry to speak, so he nods. Bucky looks at him for a moment longer, then rolls over. “Night.”

“Oh, uh. Night,” he stammers. “Yeah. Good night.”

He closes his eyes and listens to Bucky breathe, and soon enough he’s asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, so not a lot actually happens in this chapter but i felt like this was a good cutoff before we get into the next trial. those of you familiar with eva may recognize this little modification to the bots, so, shout out to u guys. um, full disclosure, i am a tiny little bit drunk on whiskey ginger so i am not really coming up with many more things to say about this chapter. sorry!! i hope it is okay, i hope you like it, i would love to hear from you about it one way or another, even if you hate it. although i hope you don't hate it. anyway thank you for being here, comments and feedback are welcome!!! okay!! goodbye!! xxxx


	4. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isolation trial day one. Steve is not, like, a cool dude. Bucky is cryptic once again, but also very hot. U know.

It’s cold in the morning.

Steve opens his eyes and sees his breath cloud and hang in the air above him. He's about to roll over and go back to sleep - it feels too early to be awake - but then he hears a muffled sound. He sits up just a little, letting his eyes wander around the room, and he sees Bucky’s lips moving.

He's whispering, Steve thinks, a low undercurrent of words that he can't hear that sound like they're all consonants and slushing sounds.

He moves like someone in a dream, watching himself from a distance as he folds back the blanket, slips out of the bed, and pads across the freezing concrete floor. He crouches next to Bucky’s cot, watching the little wisps of breath ghost out of his mouth, and listens.

_Желание,_ he murmurs. _Проржавевший. Семнадцать, рассвет, печь, девять, добросердечный. Возвращение на родину. Один. Грузовой вагон._ _Желание, желание, желание_.

Steve tries to memorize the sounds, to store them away until he can repeat them for a computer, approximate them enough to get a translation. He wonders what language it is. He stands up slowly, carefully, and tiptoes back toward his bed.

The door slams open when he's directly between the two rows of cots, clad only in the thin sleeping suits they're issued, and everyone in the room bolts awake and immediately focuses on him. He gives a tiny wave and gestures uncomfortably toward the door.

Fury’s tapping his foot already, which might be a record given that the slam of the door opening is still echoing. He scowls at them.

“Danvers and I will meet you on sublevel F,” he says. “Don't eat anything.”

They file downstairs meekly. No one says much. Sharon is pulling loose threads out of her jumpsuit and Clint is trying to distract her by making shadow puppets as they pass by the Shatterdome’s lights. Sam and Riley are silent, shoulder to shoulder. Steve tries to think of things to say to Bucky and fails.

Danvers looks a little ill, but still terrifying. “I don't like this trial,” she says without preamble. “But it is important, and you will do it.”

She motions to three structures behind her, dwarfed by the scale of the room.

“These test chambers will be your homes for the next three days. Rogers, Barnes, chamber A; Carter, Barton, chamber B; Sawyer, Wilson, chamber C. There are immersion suits waiting for you. Go inside, get changed, and wait for me.”

Steve looks at Bucky, who shows no sign of wanting to move.

He waits another beat and suddenly he’s furious with himself for letting this asshole with sad eyes affect his chances of being a pilot. He squares his shoulders and strides toward the chamber. _If he wants to screw around, let him. They’ll replace him soon enough and then I’ll get a_ real _copilot. One who_ wants _to be here_.

He throws open the door and stalks inside, snatching one of the weird rubbery suits off the hook on the wall. He unzips his jumpsuit angrily, yanking his arms out of it, shoving it down his body so the metal teeth of the zipper scrape his skin. He looks at the immersion suit, wondering if he’s supposed to be completely naked. He holds it open, tries to peer inside it.

“You gotta take ‘em off.”

He sounds almost amused.

Steve spins around, clutching the suit to his chest. He almost trips on the jumpsuit puddled around his ankles, but manages to kick his way out of it somewhat successfully. He doesn’t fall down, at least.

Bucky’s smirking, which makes Steve even angrier.

“How do you know?” he snaps.

The smirk deepens, revealing a dimple in his left cheek. He unzips his own jumpsuit and shrugs it off. Steve sucks in a breath and averts his eyes, but not before he clocks a very broad, very tall expanse of smooth tanned skin. And-

“You’re not - you didn’t -”

“Gotta be completely naked under the suit, Rogers.”

His anger ratchets up another notch as the sound of his name on Bucky’s lips sends a shiver through him. He hears the sound of fabric sliding and then a strange pneumatic hiss. “S’okay,” Bucky says, and Steve lowers his eyes.

The suit fits him perfectly.

Of course it does.

He takes another deep breath, looks away, and sheds the last shred of dignity he has left. He steps into the immersion suit and pulls it on. It fits at the wrists and ankles, somehow, but everywhere else it gaps and hangs like loose, wrinkled skin. “Ah, Christ,” he mutters, yanking at the sleeve. “Well-”

Bucky steps closer to him and takes his hand. A bolt of electricity shoots up his arm into his brain, and he can’t speak.

Bucky turns his hand over, palm up, and closes his own hand on Steve’s wrist. His thumb nestles into the soft hollow next to the carpal bones and Steve swallows hard, closes his eyes, and then there’s a faint _click_ and that same pneumatic hiss and his eyes shoot open in alarm as the suit suctions itself to his body.

“What the-” He jerks backward, trips over his discarded jumpsuit, and goes down hard.

He holds out his arms above him as he lies on the floor, turning them back and forth.

“What the hell,” he says wonderingly. Bucky hauls him up off the ground and kicks the jumpsuit out of the way.

“Stark tech is pretty next-level,” he says, letting go of Steve, who tries not to notice how cold he feels without that warm grip around his wrists.

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah.” _God damn it._

He’s halfway to thinking of something good to say when Danvers comes into the chamber.

“Good,” she says shortly. “You figured out the suits.” Her eyes flick to Bucky for a second before she continues. “Sit down.”

Steve looks behind him for the first time and sees two metal things that might be considered chairs, in a very loose and painful sense.

“We’re not using the full pilot connections for this trial, but you will be plugged in.”

Danvers circles the chairs, pats one and looks at Steve meaningfully. He walks over and tentatively sits down.

There’s a sting at the back of his neck and then his body goes quiet for the first time since he walked into the chamber.

He raises his hand - he tries to raise his hand. It flexes gently and continues hanging at his side. Danvers nods. “The range of motion required to pilot the jaeger is extremely limited. The motion that you make in here translates to a thousandsfold increase out there. So the cockpit is about the size of two adult humans plus very little extra.”

He thinks, _Punch something_. Big roundhouse, wide swing.

His arm sways slightly.

“Are you kidding me,” he says.

“You’ll get used to it.” She’s moving around him now, clipping various things to his hands and feet, putting electrodes on his temples. “How do you feel as far as hunger, thirst, so on?”

He thinks about it. “Actually good, I think. I was starving when I woke up but now I feel okay.”

“Integration fluid is working,” she murmurs to herself. “Okay.” She claps her hands together briskly and turns to Bucky, who’s sitting patiently in the chair, arms dangling. Steve turns his head as far as he can to watch as she wires him up. His eyes are focused somewhere beyond the ceiling, somewhere far away. “Integration fluid?” she asks. He gives the barest nod. She straightens up and backs away, standing far enough from them that they can both see her.

“You’re ready,” she says. “This is the time for any last questions, concerns, remarks. This door will not open again for seventy-two hours, unless there is a massive malfunction requiring emergency evacuation.”

They sit in silence. She waits another moment.

“Very well. Good luck.”

She pauses with her hand on the light switch, and then they’re plunged into darkness. There’s a slice of light as the door opens and closes, and then she’s gone, and they’re alone.

The darkness is so complete, so pure. He can’t hear anything, can’t see anything, and his body feels strangely weightless. He thinks about a documentary he once saw.

“Is this - is this sensory deprivation?”

“You can hear, can’t you?”

Bucky’s disdain is only very thinly veiled.

“Well, I mean - yes, but - only if you’re gonna talk to me.”

“We don’t have to talk.”

The tone doesn’t really allow for any argument.

Steve sighs and closes his eyes. _It doesn’t matter_ , he thinks. _Three days and they’ll assign me a new copilot. Just make it through three days._

After an indeterminable amount of time he falls asleep. He doesn’t dream, which is a mercy he doesn’t yet appreciate.

He wakes up in darkness. Before he can stop himself he says, “Bucky?”

The resulting silence is answer enough. He tamps his anger down, closes his eyes, and does deep breathing exercises. After awhile he thinks he sleeps again.

The next time he wakes up he’s still angry, and this time he says it loud and sharp.

“Bucky.”

There is a loud, long sigh.

“What.”

“Look, what is your _problem_ , dude?” It’s easier to be confrontational when he doesn’t have to look at him. “What is your issue with me?”

“What are you talking about?” He sounds almost bored.

“What-” Steve sputters. “From day _one_ you have been nothing but weird and shitty to me and I _don’t get it_. I don’t know what I did to you, but you know what? I’m starting not to give a shit. You don’t have to talk to me, I don’t care. Let’s just sit here for three days and then get reassigned. Personally, I’ll be happy to be free of your surly ass.”

He takes a deep breath and lets it out. He feels… not better, but… emptier. Which is at least something.

Bucky doesn’t say anything.

“Whatever,” Steve mumbles, turning his head away. “I don’t know what I expected.”

He dozes.

He wakes.

He dozes.

He wakes.

He’s _bored_. He doesn’t even care if Bucky’s rude to him, he just needs some kind of mental stimulation.

“How long do you think we’ve been in here?”

Bucky makes a long, low rumbling sound like he was asleep. Steve feels something tighten in the pit of his stomach and wants to punch himself so hard he’s unconscious for the rest of the three days.

“Dunno. Ten hours, maybe. Twelve at most.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nah.”

He can’t even lift his hands to wring them. “I’m gonna go insane in here.”

“I won’t let you go insane.”

“Oh, well, that’s a relief. I feel so much better.”

“You’re not great at sarcasm, you know that?”

“You-” He snaps his mouth shut. “Whatever.”

There’s a small chuffing sound.

“Are you _laughing_?”

“I’m not doin’ anything, Rogers. Just here to keep you from goin’ crazy.”

Steve tries, he tries so hard not to hear a smile in Bucky’s voice but he does, and it makes him feel like crying.

“Yeah, well. Do better. ‘Cause you’re the one driving me crazy.”

Bucky laughs. A real laugh, from deep in his chest.

“I’ll try, but I’m not promising anything.”

Steve smiles, glad he isn’t visible in the darkness. He closes his eyes and then, for the second night in a row, he falls asleep to the sound of Bucky’s breathing.

Outside the chamber, the clock reads DAY 01 2214 HRS.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are once again. The fun has only just begun! Three days in a test chamber is the new seven minutes in heaven! Tune in next week to find out who the mystery Pokemon is! But really, thank you for being here, thank you for reading, please feel free to talk to me or tell me things or ask me things, I welcome any and all feedback. Yay! Thank you! Also, sorry about the you-know-what. I love to suffer.


	5. four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky does not like to talk about his past, but they're stuck in a box together, so.

DAY 02 0300 HRS

He swims up slowly out of unconsciousness, breaking the surface of the dark room like water. For a moment he isn’t sure why, and then his ears hone in on the sound coming from his right.

_“_ _Богатырь ты будешь с виду,_  
_И казак душой._  
_Провожать тебя я выйду —  
_ _Ты махнешь рукой…"_

Bucky is singing, his voice barely more than a whisper, husky and sweet. The melody is wistful, winding, and Steve wishes he could turn his head and move closer to the sound. Bucky’s voice rasps across the distance between them.

_“Стану я тоской томиться,_  
_Безутешно ждать;_  
_Стану целый день молиться,_  
_По ночам гадать;_  
_Стану думать, что скучаешь  
_ _Ты в чужом краю…"_

He tries to shift his body and lets out a soft huffing breath of effort. Immediately the singing stops.

“Rogers?”

He thinks about not answering, pretending to be asleep. Maybe he’ll start singing again.

“Rogers, I know you’re awake.”

“Yeah, I’m awake.”

There is a small creak as one of them manages to move slightly. Steve thinks it might be him, but he’s not sure.

“Sorry about that,” Bucky says after a minute.

“What?” It comes out a little louder than he means it to, a little more desperate. He tries to modulate. “Why would you be?”

“Kinda weird, isn’t it? Singing to myself in the dark.”

_I thought you were singing to me_ , he thinks. “I don’t mind. It was nice.”

Bucky laughs. “Isolation must be getting to you.”

“Must be.” He’s running out of energy to be mad at either Bucky’s inscrutability or his own lack of game, that’s for sure. He closes his eyes.

“What language is that?”

“Russian.”

“How d’you speak Russian? Aren’t you from Brooklyn?”

“Look who paid attention during introductions.”

“Is that what you were speaking the other night? You were talking in your sleep.”

He tries to assemble the sounds in his mind, play them back. “ _Желание?”_

Bucky doesn’t answer, and the silence stretches and yawns and flexes claws in the dark.

“Did I totally butcher it, I’m sorry,” he offers.

“I don’t talk in my sleep.” He spits out each word. “Dunno what you’re talking about.”

“The other night, I... I thought I heard you.”

He falters, unsure. This clearly isn’t something Bucky wants to discuss. He’d only meant it as a conversational offering, something to keep him talking, and now the distance between them feels wider than ever. He wishes he could lift his head enough to whack it on the chair. _God, how much time do we have left in here? Can a person die of awkwardness?_

“Maybe I was dreaming.”

The silence this time is so long that he’s almost asleep when Bucky speaks again.

“Must have been a pretty bad dream.”

He tries as hard as he can to sound casual as he says, “Nah, it wasn’t so bad.”

He doesn’t know how to read this, this strangeness crackling between them. He could swear Bucky hates his guts and then suddenly he’s talking to him, teasing him. Could swear there’s not a gentle bone in his body, and then he’s singing in their tiny isolation pod.

“I don’t get you, Barnes,” he whispers, the words ghosting out across his lips. He doesn’t expect an answer, doesn’t even think he was audible, but a moment later the reply floats across the air, gossamer-light and almost silent.

“You don’t want to.”

* * *

DAY 02 0618 HRS

He’s trying to remember all the state capitals. He’s run through the states themselves upwards of a hundred times, but now he’s doing capitals. He keeps getting hung up on Nevada. He knows it’s not Vegas, but the only other city he can think of is Reno and he doesn’t think that’s right.

“Barnes.”

He says it quietly, in case he’s asleep.

“What.”

He doesn’t sound angry anymore. Just tired.

“What’s the capital of Nevada?”

“What?”

An edge of tension now, but an undercurrent that might be amusement.

“Nevada. The capital of Nevada. It’s not Reno, right?”

“Carson City.”

Steve groans. “You didn’t even have to think about it.”

“I am a man of many skills,” Bucky says gravely. “Memorization is among them.”

“Huh. D’you know any movies by heart? Or anything with a plot, really. Epic poems, that kind of thing?”

“You want me to recite poetry for you.”

There’s definitely amusement in his voice now, something wry and playful. Steve thinks about a feral cat he once had to coax into the apartment from the fire escape.

“Only if it’s good. Nothing modern.”

Bucky snorts. “I could do probably five minutes of  _Terminator_ , but that’s about all I got.”

“Just do that sixty times. I keep getting weird pop songs stuck in my head and the only thing I have to fight them off is the state capitals. And I apparently don’t know those.”

“So what you’re saying is you’re bringing nothing to this partnership.”

“Not unless you’d appreciate very off-tune renditions of Top 40 hits.”

He hears that small chuffing sound again. He can almost hear the smirk that accompanies it, can visualize the dimple in his cheek. _This partnership_.

“So you are gonna be my copilot.” He tries to make it a statement, but it comes out tentative, almost needy.

Bucky sighs. “Rogers…”

He waits. His heart is beating perfectly evenly, which he assumes is a result of whatever 'integration fluid' is made of, because if his brain had any control of it right now it’d be thudding violently into his ribcage.

“Steve.”

He loses his breath for a moment, and when he inhales again it’s shaky and loud. _For fuck’s sake._

“I don’t want to be anyone’s copilot. It has nothing to do with you.”

He doesn’t know what to say. “So-”

“So I might as well be yours as anyone else’s.”

“Why are you even in this program?”

“Because they wouldn’t let me leave.” His voice is low and laced with fury. “Because they saw my _potential_ the first time around and when my copilot left they put me back in with the next batch of new trainees.”

It takes a moment to sink in.

He’s done this before.

He was paired with someone, did the trials, he was trained, he was - rejected?

Rage floods his brain and spews out of his mouth. “What?!”

Bucky starts to speak, but he’s not listening.

“Why would you do that to me? To _anyone_ who wanted to be a pilot? You could have said something. You could have - they can’t _make_ you stay, it’s not _prison_ , it’s _voluntary_ , and now by the time I get out of here I’ll have wasted a full week of training and everyone’s already paired off and they might not even put me back _into_ training because the only person I paired with was _you_ , you fucking-” He’s almost crying with anger. “Why’d your partner leave, huh? Were you weird and cryptic with him too, or is that new, just for me?”

He stops talking, afraid of what he'll say next, and the rage departs as suddenly as it came. A wave of exhaustion crashes over him. He closes his eyes and takes a ragged breath.

Bucky clears his throat. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse and tight with emotion.

“She didn’t leave. They took - they took her back.”

Something clicks into place in Steve’s head.

“Russia,” he whispers.

“Yeah.” The words are strangled. “We only drifted once, but - we would have been really good together. We _were_ really good together.”

He doesn’t want to feel sorry for Bucky. He doesn’t want to forgive him for jeopardizing what might be his only chance at becoming a pilot. He’s worked hard as hell to get here, but he’s not exactly a prime physical specimen, and if he washes out during trials they’ll probably shuttle him back down into Mechanics permanently. But the hurt in Bucky's voice is so raw, and it unravels him.

“What happened?”

Bucky’s breathing gets shallower. _He’s scared_ , Steve thinks, and realizes he’s starting to be able to read him, even in the dark.

“Her mom was - is, I guess - she’s part of the team that designs the jaegers in Russia. Working on single-pilot units.”

“What?” It’s startled out of him. “I thought that was impossible.”

“It is,” Bucky says darkly. “The neural overload would kill you the moment the jaeger tried to interface with you.”

“So-”

“So I don’t know, Rogers. She was here and then she wasn’t. She told me her mom wanted her back at their facility. I didn’t exactly have time to ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, and he is.

“I just don’t - I don’t wanna drift with anyone else if I don’t know if they’re gonna leave. I don’t wanna do that again.”

“I wouldn’t leave.” He winces at the desperation in his voice.

The cadence of Bucky’s breathing shifts again, but he doesn’t say anything.

“What’s it like?”

“What?”

“Drifting.”

Asking makes him feel like a little kid, inexperienced, self-conscious. He’d blush if his blood weren’t circulating perfectly evenly.

“You ever dissect frogs in high school?”

“Um. No. Fetal pigs.”

“Sick. But okay. Did you have the clamps, the like, things you clamped on the sides of the cut to hold it open while you poked around in there?”

He thinks back. “Yeah, I guess.”

“It’s like that. Drifting. It’s like someone’s holding you open, like all your guts are exposed. All your nerves and shit. Just… everything is just out there. It feels… you feel _seen_.”

Steve realizes he’s holding his breath, lets it out.

“It’s like… the other person has your heart in their hands. In a visceral sense. Like they’re holding your heart and they could squeeze it, dig their fingers into it until it bursts. But they won’t.”

“Because they’re your copilot.”

“Yeah.”

“Scary.”

“Yeah.”

There's a long silence.

“I won’t squeeze your heart,” Steve says at last.

Bucky laughs, a sleepy, surprised bark. It’s a little ragged, but it’s real.

Steve listens as his breathing deepens, his own chest rising and falling in rhythm.

He’s almost asleep when Bucky murmurs, “Hey, Steve?”

He thinks, _What_ , but it doesn’t reach his lips, and then he’s gone.

This time he dreams.

DAY 02 0808 HRS  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god, you guys. i dunno. merry christmas? sorry i'm like this? anyway, i will try my best to update again this weekend because this chapter is late, but i can't promise anything because my family gets a little nuts and there's really no normal way to be like, 'hey guys, i gotta go to bed early so i can write gay fanfiction', so. anyway. thank you for still being here, if you are, i hope you're still enjoying it, i'll see you soon, hopefully <3


	6. five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isolation starts to get to both of them. A tentative thawing, an even more tentative warming.

DAY 02 0902 HRS

He wakes up with something sitting on his chest, crushing his lungs, and he can’t breathe. He’s making a choked, strangling sound, a wet gasping _huh - huh - huh_ punctuated by sucking, whistling attempts at inhaling. He can’t speak, his mouth opening and shutting like a hooked fish. He can’t move his arms, he can’t move his legs, there’s something inside his windpipe perched and barbed and swelling. He tries to cough, tries to turn his head to dislodge it, and he can’t see in the darkness and then he wakes up.

He wakes up, and this time beyond the wheeze of his own spasming lungs he can hear Bucky’s voice.

“Rogers. Rogers! Steve. Stevie. Steve, hey, Steve, listen-”

He starts murmuring in Russian, the words he spoke in his sleep, the syllables washing over Steve as he struggles to calm his racing heart.

“Steve, listen, say it with me, okay? Say it in your head, say it with me.”

_Желание. Проржавевший. Семнадцать, рассвет, печь, девять, добросердечный. Возвращение на родину. Один. Грузовой вагон. Желание. Проржавевший. Семнадцать, рассвет, печь, девять, добросердечный. Возвращение на родину. Один. Грузовой вагон._

He follows Bucky’s voice, closes his eyes and hears the quick shallow breaths he takes between the words, the way the Russian makes his pitch change. He listens, his lips moving, feeling his lungs hitch and settle, hitch and settle. “ _Желание,”_ he whispers shakily, barely a sound, but Bucky hears it.

“Good job, Stevie, good, yeah, keep going-”

“ _Проржавевший_.” He sips at the air. " _Семнадцать_.”

Slowly, slowly, his breathing deepens, and he keeps whispering. Bucky leads and he follows, half a step behind, drowsy in the wake of terror.

“Steve.”

“Mm?”

“You okay now?”

He doesn’t know how long they’ve been repeating the words, but Bucky’s voice is hoarse.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’m okay.” He can still feel a crackle when he inhales, but Bucky’s gotten him through the worst of it.

“What does it mean?” he asks. “Well - thank you, I mean. I should have said that first. Thank you.”

Bucky doesn’t answer.

“How did you know to do that? Is that - did your copilot -”

“Natasha,” he says. “It’s… I don’t know. I guess you could say a mantra? It’s just something her mother taught her to do when she needed to let her mind go blank. She.. she taught it to me. When I needed it.”

Steve imagines a soft, musical voice cutting through the darkness.

“Longing,” Bucky says. Steve tenses.

“What?”

“Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak. Furnace.”

His voice shakes and then steadies.

“Nine. Benign. Homecoming.”

Another breath.

“One.”

Another.

“Freight car.”

Something strange and wistful curls itself beneath Steve’s breastbone.

“I don’t understand.”

“Me neither,” Bucky says with a rueful laugh. “‘S just a list, I guess. Sounds nice when you string it together, doesn’t make you think too hard.”

“Well, thanks,” he says. “Whatever it is, it works.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Is this easier the second time?”

He doesn’t know he’s going to ask it until it’s out of his mouth.

“Isolation. Is it-” He’s not sure what he wants to say. “Did you have nightmares? Do you still?”

Bucky sighs. “Not easier. Just different. I still have nightmares, I just - I know how to handle it better this time.”

“What do you dream about?” _He won’t answer_.

“My sister dying. Sometimes my mom. Sometimes-” A wet, muffled cough. “Variations on a theme, y’know.”

“Jesus,” is all Steve can think to say. “Makes asthma seem like a cakewalk.”

Bucky huffs a laugh. “Dunno. Mine won’t actually kill me.”

“At least we know you can save my life if you need to,” Steve says. “Can’t really do anything about your thing.”

“Y’never know.” He sounds almost cheerful. “Maybe you’ll surprise me.”

“Did she teach you the song, too?”

“Yeah. Lot of stuff. Useless outside needing to get into each other’s heads.”

“Until now.”

“‘Til now.”

 

DAY 02 1240 HRS

“My skin itches.”

“No it doesn’t.”

“You don’t know!”

“Actually, I do. You might as well not have nerves below the neck right now. I could chop off your hand.”

“You couldn’t.”

“Theoretically. I’m just saying you don’t itch.”

“Then my brain itches.”

“Sshh. You’re gonna make me itchy. Think of something else.”

“Distract me.”

“Okay, there’s two goldfish in a tank.”

“‘Kay.”

“The one turns to the other and says, ‘You drive, I’ll do the gun.’”

“Booo.”

“Do better.”

“All my good jokes have a visual component.”

“Excuses.”

 

DAY 02 1506 HRS

“Okay, I’m thinking of a word. Starts with P.”

“Mmm. Bird that lives in the Antarctic.”

“Not a penguin.”

“Fuzzy crafting supply.”

“Not… ah, shit. What?”

“Ten seconds.”

“Fuck. Not… paint.”

“Five seconds. Fuzzy.”

“Fuck.”

“Pipe cleaner.”

“God damn it. Second letter E.”

 

DAY 02 1735 HRS

“I have a hard time imagining you getting beaten up.”

“Well, I was a lot smaller in grade school.”

"I got beaten up a lot in grade school.”

“Makes sense.”

“Hey!”

“Ah, Rogers, lighten up. You’re small ‘n’ idealistic. I’d be surprised if you _didn’t_ get beaten up.”

“Well-”

“Don’t be mad. For what it’s worth, if I’d been around I’d have been on your side.”

“I probably could have used some backup.”

“Cute that you think I’d be your backup.”

“Well, I’m idealistic, y’know. Can’t let you fight my fights for me.”

“Uh huh.”

 

DAY 02 2000 HRS

“What do you sound like when you sing in English?”

“Mm?”

“Sorry, are you sleeping-”

“No, no, ‘s’okay, what d’you-”

“Oh, I was just - your voice sounds - different in Russian, when you talk. I just wondered if it’s the same for singing.”

“Huh. I dunno.”

Steve thinks he must have fallen back asleep, but then, quietly:

“Desperado… why don’t you come to your senses...”

It’s not the same as when he sings in Russian. It’s wilder, lonelier, like it’s spanning a great distance, and it pulls at something deep inside him.

 _Your prison is walkin’ through this world all alone._ Tears prickle the backs of his eyes.

“You better let somebody love you, let somebody love you… before it’s too late.”

Bucky falls silent.

Steve clears his throat, tries to keep his voice from shaking. “Wow.”

Bucky laughs, embarrassed. “Becks, she really likes the Eagles. Used to put her to sleep a lot.”

“No, you’re - you’re really good. That was-” _Beautiful._ “-really good.” _Fuck_.

“Better than the Russian?”

“No, just different. Sadder. Maybe because I can understand the words.”

“Sad song.”

“Is the other one?”

“Oh, yeah. All Russian songs are sad, I’m pretty sure. I mean, that one’s for babies, and it's sad, so.”

“Your sister’s name is Becks? Is that - what is that?”

“Rebecca.” He’s smiling, Steve’s sure of it.

“Jeez. Becks and Bucky. Were your parents trying for a reality show?”

“My real name’s James.”

This takes him a moment. “Wait, what?”

“James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. ‘S a nickname. Did you think my parents _named_ me Bucky?”

“Well - until you said that, I did.”

His laugh is so sweet.

“Natasha only ever called me James. Said Bucky wasn’t an appropriately dignified name for someone in command of a jaeger. Plus with the accent, y’know. James is easier.”

“Do you - should I -”

“Nah, nah. My name is Bucky. Natasha just has her own way of doing things.”

“Bucky,” he says, and hears him inhale sharply. His heart stutters. “Bucky suits you.”

 

DAY 03 0413 HRS

His voice is hoarse from yelling, and he should be worried about having another attack, but he’s so deep in the grip of fear that he can’t stop himself.

“LET US OUT! HEY! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR US! LET US OUT!”

“Steve-”

“It’s been more than three days. It’s - it has to - something’s wrong, they forgot about us, we’re gonna die in here-”

He starts hyperventilating, and then he blacks out.

 

DAY 03 0520 HRS

“Steve, goddammit, wake _up-_ Steve-”

The raw panic in Bucky’s voice pulls him sharply awake. “What? What? Is everything - what’s happening? What-”

“Jesus fucking-” Bucky lets out an explosive breath. “I thought you were dead.”

“What?”

“You started screaming, and then you started fuckin’ wheezing, and then _nothing_ for goddamn who _knows_ how long. I thought your lungs-”

“Shit, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m okay. I got - I panicked.”

“Your brain’s hyperactive right now because your body’s using, like, no energy at all,” Bucky says darkly. “Some people see things, hear things. ‘S’why your copilot’s gotta be able to talk you down. You have to freak out at different intervals.”

He tries to laugh, but it’s weak and unconvincing. “Sure would be great if I could just sleep for three days, huh.”

“No one can. The best you can do is trick yourself into a trance, kind of. Like meditating. Like I showed you earlier.”

Bucky takes a deep breath, lets it out. “Just focus on your breathing, Stevie. Follow mine, okay? Seven counts.”

They breathe together, not speaking, just the tide coming in, going out. He feels the panic recede as he listens to Bucky’s soft rasping inhales, counting, until his brain goes quiet.

 

DAY 03 1333 HRS

“Remember when I told you we have to freak out at different times?”

Bucky’s voice startles him out of the half-sleep he’s lulled himself into.

“Yeah,” he says tentatively.

“‘Kay, now’s that time for me.”

“Ah, shit. Okay, Buck. Okay, we can do this, we can do this.”

He racks his brain. “Longing,” he says, trying to keep his voice low and even, soothing. “Longing, rusted, seventeen, hey, Buck? I don’t remember them in Russian because I’m nervous, but maybe if I do them in English you can do them with me in Russian, okay? Daybreak, uh, furnace, nine, right? You with me? Benign, homecoming, one. Freight car.”

In the silence after his words he can hear a jagged, tearing sound that he knows is Bucky crying, and in that moment he would give anything in the world to make it stop.  
“Okay, we’re going again. If you start me with the Russian I can maybe do it, huh?”

The crying doesn’t stop, it doesn’t sound like he’s getting enough air, Steve’s lungs spasm in sympathy and he feels a wild desperate urge to just take Bucky in his arms and hold him until he calms down but he can’t, and he can’t remember the words, so he just starts talking.

“You know, the kaiju and me, we’re the same age, kind of. We showed up the same year. All the time when I was growing up, we had the drills, in school - I’m sure you had those, you’re from New York - we had the drills where you’d get under your desk, cover your head, and I remember thinking _this isn’t going to save anyone_ . I was fuckin’ six, seven years old, and I was under a desk like _if a kaiju comes to this building right now this desk is going to do jack shit_ , I mean, I wasn’t swearing at six, probably, but you know.” He takes a breath. _Stop babbling_.

“But I knew even then that I wanted to protect people, you know? I didn’t know how, but I knew I was going to. And then the jaegers happened and then they opened the Dome and - I’m not strong, you know. Not like you. But I’m here, and I’m not giving up, and I know you don’t wanna be my copilot and maybe you’re gonna quit on me the second we get out of this room but god damn it, until you do, I’m gonna keep you safe, okay? I’m gonna get you through this.”

He sucks in another mouthful of air as quietly as he can, trying to keep his tone even. “You’re my copilot, Barnes, until you decide you’re not.”

Bucky’s not quite crying anymore, but his breathing is uneven, rattly, and so Steve keeps talking. He talks about his dad, dead in the Attar event, and his mom, dead of k-blue poisoning last fall. He talks about drawing, about how it feels to pin something down.

“I worry that I’m tricking myself into thinking that things matter,” he says. “Like, if I draw something then it’s worth keeping, but then I have to draw everything in order to keep it. I can’t just see something because I’ll lose it.” _The curve of your mouth_.

He talks about the guitar he never learned to play, about school dances he never went to. “I didn’t do a lot of things, I guess,” he says into the darkness. “Because I was always waiting to do this.”

“Hope it was worth it.”

Bucky’s voice is weak, but it’s there, and relief hits Steve like a punch in the gut. Suddenly there’s a lump in his throat.

“Oh, thank god,” he murmurs. “I was running out of things to talk about.”

“I was hoping you’d sing, to be honest.”

“Trial’s not over yet.”

He listens to Bucky breathe, luxuriating in the slow, even rhythm.

“D’you wanna talk about it?”

“Nah.”

He closes his eyes, feeling a sudden wave of exhaustion.

“Steve.”

He grunts.

“I’m not gonna quit on you.”

 

DAY 03 2350 HRS

“They don’t start with ‘once upon a time’.”

“Really.”

“No, yeah. They start all their fairy tales with ‘in another place’.”

Steve ponders this for a moment.

“I don’t know why, but that’s sad. It makes the story feel like it’s gonna be sad.”

“‘Cause it feels more real.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

 _In another place_ , he thinks. It sounds like lost opportunity, like _what if_.

“What happens after this?” he asks after a minute. “After the trial. Assuming we ever get out of here.”

“We’ll get out.” Amusement disguised as weariness. “After this there’s sort of a… decompression chamber, I guess you’d call it. We’re locked into a different room but without the fluid, with the lights on, and so on. It’s sort of a precursor to velcroing.”

Steve knows what velcroing is, vaguely, knows that after the drift it takes a while to disentangle the neural link, to remember where your own edges are against your copilot’s. No one really talks about it outside of pilots, but you hear things. He has a brief, painful fragment of a thought, the two of them pressed together from tip to toe, wrapped in each other like their lives depend on it. He shakes his head - or tries to, anyway. “Fuck.”

“It won’t be so bad, Rogers,” Bucky says. “This is the hard part. They’re gonna feed us in there.”

Before he can answer, a light comes on.

It’s dim, barely as bright as a candle flame, but after three days of darkness it makes him hiss and shut his eyes tight. He slivers one eyelid open, letting himself adjust, and then slowly raises both eyelids to half-mast.

“One-minute warning,” says Bucky.

The light brightens slowly, gradually, until Steve can see the ceiling he’s been staring at for three days. Trying to, anyway. Then the door swings open, and Danvers’ voice says, “Congratulations, trainees.”

* * *

The decompression room is a pale green, for some reason. Bucky says it’s mentally soothing. There are two beds, a tiny table, and a stack of coloring books. “No real books?” Steve asks, flipping through them.

“Your mind has just had three days of uninterrupted imagination,” Bucky says, already immersed in a Lisa Frank rendering of porpoises. “You’re not ready for real books.”

Steve sighs and takes one of the coloring books - _Bram Stoker’s Dracula The Coloring Book_ \- and curls up on one of the beds. _At least this one has dialogue_.

He wakes up a few hours later, in what he guesses is the middle of the night - the lights in the room are off, and there’s a faint minty glow coming from the tiny nightlight in the corner. He’s managed to wedge himself into the corner, hand wrapped under his pillow and then over his own head like he’s hexing himself to sleep. He stretches, then turns over, and then freezes.

Bucky is curled next to him on the mattress, a lock of hair fluttering against his lips as he sleeps.

Steve’s heart leaps into overdrive, finally allowed to panic the way it wants. He turns slowly, slowly, relaxing a fraction of an inch at a time, until he’s lying on his side, facing Bucky. There are maybe three inches between them but it feels like miles. He looks at him, his softly curving lips. He looks so much less angry when he’s asleep, the furrows in his forehead smoothed away.

Steve feels, inexplicably, like crying.

Bucky opens his eyes.

His gaze is soft, hazy with sleep, but it pins Steve like a butterfly to a corkboard and all he can do is lie there, staring back at him, his breath coming in shallow pants.

The corner of Bucky’s mouth tips up, just a little, just enough that Steve can see it in the dim light, and then his eyes drift shut again.

Steve exhales shakily and closes his own eyes.

They snap open again a moment later when something brushes across his collarbone.

Bucky curls his hand loosely into the neckline of his shirt, knuckles grazing the hollow of his throat. His fingers are cold against Steve’s skin.

He doesn’t move, can’t move, doesn’t know what to think or feel. _It’s decompression_ , he tells himself. _It’s what pilots do_.

Bucky stirs and murmurs something and tightens his grip and it’s all Steve can do not to touch his face, but he doesn’t. He looks at his eyelashes, the way they sweep shadows across his cheeks, and he does not move.

He just lies there, his heart jackhammering in his chest, until somehow, eventually, he falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have not read [Reconstruction](http://archiveofourown.org/works/893409) by disco_vendetta I highly, highly recommend it as both an excellent 10/10 fic and also as the basis for velcroing AFAIK.  
> The letter game is actually quite fun, although it usually requires more than two people.  
> It is advised that you listen to ["Desperado"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDNtqy0zjJA) during the part where Bucky sings it, but only if you wanna get really sad. You better let somebody love you! Come on!!  
> Comments and feedback are welcome as always! I appreciate you so much! <3!


	7. six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drift compatibility alone isn't enough.

SIX MONTHS LATER

“Wake up.”

“Mm.”

“Wake _up_.”

Bucky flicks his nose. “Rogers.”

He slings an arm across his face and rolls over.

Bucky starts shaking the mattress, jouncing him out of his pillow-cocoon. He groans and sits up.

“Fine. I'm up. Are you happy?”

“Yes,” says Bucky, smiling serenely. “But only because your hair is _so_ stupid right now.”

He wipes a hand down his face, middle finger casually extended. Bucky barks a laugh.

“You talk a lot of shit for someone with a bun,” he grumbles, shoving the covers back and stumbling toward his tiny locker.

Something snips into the back of his neck and he claps his hand to it before it can fall to the ground. A hair tie.

“Your aim’s getting better,” he remarks absently, slipping the little band onto his own wrist. He folds himself into his suit with his eyes half-shut and clicks the button, the pneumatic hiss vaguely comforting as the suit suctions to him.

Bucky thuds into the wall next to him, arms folded, hair falling over one eye. “Thought you'd be more excited about today.”

He rakes a hand through his hair, wishing for a mirror bigger than the dull metal oval bolted to the wall. “I'm getting there. I didn't…” He turns away from his warped reflection. “I didn't expect it to be so early.”

Bucky laughs again, the sound bright in the darkened room. “They told us weeks ago.”

“And then we had a fuckin’ party.” He closes the locker and presses his forehead to the metal. “Are you not even a little bit hungover?”

He opens one eye and sees a flash of sharp canines. “I stopped drinkin’ about two hours before you did, Stevie.”

He groans. “How embarrassed should I be?”

There’s that small chuffing sound he's come to know so well. “Depends.”

He feels the toe of Bucky’s boot tap once on his own, and then there's just the sound of receding footsteps. Bucky pauses at the door.

“See ya downstairs, all right?”

Steve nods against the locker.

He stays there for a moment, trying to dredge up a memory of last night. He remembers Riley yelling _jaeger bombs! jaeger bombs!_ and Sam beaming like he'd won the lottery. He remembers Sharon standing on the ping-pong table singing _you - you - you oughta know-w._ Clint in the center of everything, hands moving almost too fast to see.

He went down the hall at one point, he remembers, to go outside, to get some air, and when he came back he saw Bucky lounging in an open door, his back against the frame. _Hey, Stevie._

His head swims. He remembers pressing his back against the other side of the frame, the two of them facing each other inside the doorway, but then everything goes fuzzy. _I called him ‘ponytail’_ , he thinks.  _What are you lookin’ at, ponytail?_

_Someone who looks awfully cocky for having just lost three straight games of beer pong._

He remembers Bucky leaning forward, leaning forward and Steve trying to ignore the leaping thing inside that wanted to meet him in the middle of the doorway, leaning forward until his face was so close Steve could see where he nicked himself shaving, and then he reached up and picked a tiny piece of champagne foil out of his hair. _You’re a mess, Rogers._

He punches the locker door. Not hard, just a sharp quick jab that zips up his arm to his brain and snaps his mind a little closer to focused. “Enough,” he whispers to himself. He doesn’t have time for this. He doesn’t have _room_ for this, whatever this is, in his mind.

He has to drift today.

_They_ have to drift today.

* * *

It’s a small comfort that Clint looks even worse than Steve feels. He’s cradling one of the cafeteria coffeepots like it’s a baby made of gold, and he winces as he eases himself into one of the chairs. “Fuck,” he says, reaching for one of his hearing aids. “Everything is so loud.”

Steve nods, focusing on breathing evenly. And not throwing up.

Sharon slings herself down next to him. “Aw, boys,” she says, elbowing him gently. “Did you party too hard?”

“You’re one to talk,” Clint mumbles around the rim of the coffeepot. “Alanis.”

She smirks and leans back in her chair. “I don’t need an excuse to break out the tunes.”

Steve presses his hands to his face and gives a muffled wail. Sharon pats him gently on the shoulder. “Sorry, Steve. Want me to get you a muffin?”

The wail, which hasn’t stopped, gets louder.

“No muffin, then.”

“I’ll have a muffin.”

“I didn’t ask you, Barton.”

“Too much talking,” he mumbles into his hands. “Everybody shhhh.”

“Aw, Rogers.” The coffeepot nudges him. He unclenches one of his hands and takes it. He stares into it for a moment, contemplating the fragility of the human body, and then puts it to his lips and burns his entire mouth clean off.

“How do you _drink_ this?” he sputters after the boiling liquid has seared its way down into his stomach. “Oh my god. My taste buds. My sinuses. Is my face still on?”

“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” Clint says affably, grabbing the pot and taking a huge swig. “Hurts so good.”

He does feel more awake now, he guesses. Scalding hot beverages will do that. He straightens himself into a slightly less fetal position on the chair and looks around.

“Where’s Bucky?”

Clint shrugs a shoulder. “Somewhere. Sam ‘n’ Riley aren’t here yet either.”

“We’re all supposed to go today, though, right? They have more than one uploader?”

“Yeah, yeah. There’s five sets of headsets, I think. Could’ve been more of us.”

Sharon appears again with a cup of tea and a muffin, which she places gently in Steve’s lap. “You don’t have to eat it,” she says before he can object. “I’m just putting it there.”

He pries one of the blueberries out of it and puts it gently on his tongue, then starts crumbling the rest of it into tiny pieces. If he eats it crumb by crumb, maybe his body will absorb it painlessly.

“Woooo!”

The door flies open with a bang and Riley lunges into the room, Sam on his heels. He’s at a hundred, dancing around on the balls of his feet, shadowboxing at Sam. “Drift day, drift day, drift day,” he chants, doing little air punches. “Drift day!”

Sam isn’t quite there, but he’s not far behind. “It’s gonna be amazing,” he says, that giant grin wreathing his face. “It’s finally happening.”

Steve keeps feeding tiny bits of muffin into the scorched desert that used to be his mouth, watching them. He’s not watching the door for Bucky.

Hill comes in a minute later. “First pair, with me.”

Everyone looks around. She sighs impatiently. “It doesn’t matter. One set of you. Come with me. Now.”

Riley dances back toward the door. “Let’s _do_  this!” he yowls. Sam flashes Steve a tiny smile and follows him.

Sharon folds her arms. “That could’ve been us, Clint.”

He waves a hand at her as he drains the coffeepot. “I wasn’t ready. Now I’m ready.”

She gets up to throw away her paper cup and is almost bowled over by the door. Bucky darts in, head down, and slinks into the seat she’s just vacated. She looks like maybe she’s about to say something, but Hill catches the door before it can shut and pops her head in. “Next two.”

Clint pries himself out of the chair. “See ya on the other side, Rogers.”

Then they’re alone in the little waiting room.

Steve holds out his shredded muffin. “Want some?”

Bucky lifts an eyebrow, then reaches out for a handful of crumbs.

“You gonna make it?” he asks as he pours muffin bits into his mouth.

“Probably. Can I give you a hangover through the drift?”

He rubs a hand over his mouth, looking thoughtful. “I don’t actually know,” he says. “There’s a pain-sharing element, so… probably?”

“Oh, then I’ll definitely make it.”

Bucky laughs. Heat curls through Steve’s chest.

Hill barely opens the door this time. “All right, you two. Let’s move.”

* * *

The test chamber is cold. Steve and Bucky stand there in the entryway, looking at the chairs.

“I didn’t ask last time,” Bucky says. “Right or left?”

“Does it matter?”

“Nah. Are you right-handed?”

“Yeah. Are you not?”

“No, I am. But I kind of wanna be on the left. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Steve says, oddly touched that he would ask. “I don’t care.”

They head for their respective chairs. Hill plugs them in, checks their levels. The weightlessness spreads from the base of his neck, spilling into the rest of his body. He shudders, the barest twitching of muscles.

“Be still,” she murmurs, swabbing his temples with something sharp-smelling. His eyes water. She sets the headset on his head and it makes a hollow clicking sound as it connects.

He feels something then, in his head, a tendril of something, prodding and poking. “What-” His mouth doesn't seem to be working right. She clicks her tongue at him and then moves away.

The feeling in his head is like something searching, seeking, dripping into the folds of his brain. He feels cold all over.

“Why can't I talk,” he says thickly.

“You're talking,” Hill snaps from his left. “Let yourself adjust.”

He shuts up and turns his attention inward, taking inventory. The cold is pooling, settling in, and he's starting to feel calmer. He closes his eyes.

“Are you both ready?”

She's standing behind a console, glasses reflecting scrolling green text. Her eyes flick to both of them in quick succession. “Pilots. Are you ready?”

“Yes.” The word scrapes through his lips. He hears Bucky say it, too, fuzzy and distant like he's miles away. The cold in his brain spreads and becomes a deep blackness, unfolding in front of his eyes, and there's one brief moment of perfect, total darkness before the world explodes.

_oh god what_

_what's happening what's happening_

everything is white light, dazzling and painful

_who am i_

_where am i_

shapes form, silhouettes against the blinding whiteness, hurtling toward

_me? i_

_steve_

_steve is that_

suddenly he's looking down at

_me?_

standing against a doorframe, pressed against it, looking up at

_what is happening_

and he's so small, has he always looked that small?

_bucky_

something catches and flares

_steve breathe_

and he can almost feel the edges of himself underneath his fingertips

_stevie_

_stevie focus pick something and focus_

he scrabbles for purchase in the slipstream and suddenly he's looking down at his sketchbook in the sun and sam’s voice in his ears is saying _you got it bad huh_

and he tumbles back into his body and feels his lungs heave

_okay now let it go let it go don’t chase the rabbit_

and he's still in it somehow, in the drift, and he can see it like an ocean current, buoying them along, and he starts to hear Bucky’s voice, his real voice, and the cold fingers in his brain tighten their grip and he realizes it's the drift, he's feeling the drift like a physical presence, the neural bridge has its hooks in both of them

he thinks _handshake, some pilots call it a handshake,_ and then he reaches for Bucky and Bucky reaches back.

There's another blinding flash, a strange, searing heat in his chest, and then all at once everything is gone.

He opens his eyes.

He feels Bucky open his eyes.

Hill says, “Synchronization rate stabilized at 40 percent.”

“That seems low,” he says, and his voice slips out free and easy. “Is that low?”

“It’s actually quite high,” she murmurs, rattling away at the keyboard. “Don’t talk to me. Talk to each other.”

“Does your brain feel cold?” he whispers to Bucky. “Can you feel the bridge?”

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Like it has roots.”

“Were you… were you in my head? Was I in yours?”

“I think so. That's how the bridge works, isn't it?”

“I think that’s part of it, yeah. I saw myself for a second, I think. In your memory.”

He feels something waver in the connection between them, a pulling sensation. Bucky doesn’t say anything.

“Five more minutes, pilots,” Hill murmurs, her voice barely registering in Steve’s ears.

“Thanks,” he says after a little bit. “For… grabbing me, I guess. Helping me get anchored.”

“Yeah, man. Don’t worry about it.”

“How did you know what to do? To get out of that… current?” He’d only drifted with Natasha once - maybe she was better at it -

“I read Lightcap’s book,” he answers. “Like, too many times. She said the first part of drifting is becoming one mind, but the second part is clearing that mind entirely. You have to use your memories, but not so much that you get stuck-”

“Chase the rabbit,” Steve says. “Got it.”

“So I was trying to get you to a memory, to help us both calibrate, I guess, but then I had to keep you from going down into it or I would’ve gone too-”

“So right now,” he interrupts, looking at Hill, “are we one mind? Did we-”

“Not quite.” She doesn’t look up. “This is good synchronization for a first drift, but it’s not high enough to move the jaeger. You’ll need to be over sixty percent for that. That’s when the danger of getting trapped in a memory really starts to be a factor.”

“The jaeger has a mind, in a sense,” she continues, walking out from behind the console. “What you’re attempting to do, as pilots, is to create a powerful enough consciousness to interface with it without overloading.”

The cold begins to leach out of his head, the pulling sensation getting stronger. His fingertips tingle.

“Some pilots never make it to sixty percent. There can be - hang-ups.”

She moves around behind him. The cold ebbs further.

“What do you mean, hang-ups?”

“Trust issues,” she says simply. “You can’t control what memories spring to mind as you’re forging the neural handshake, right? You’re giving someone a window into your subconscious and you can’t know what they’ll see through it.”

The tingling spreads from his fingertips up his arms. There’s a sting and a weird sliding feeling as she disconnects the nerve port.

“Modesty reflex,” Bucky says. “Lightcap mentions that. She said that’s why randomly-paired partners couldn’t pilot.”

“But we’re paired, and we're compatible,” Steve says, a shudder working through his body as his heartbeat becomes his own again. “It was random, but-”

“Drift compatibility isn’t all of it.”

Hill lifts off his headset and with it, the last of the searching, seeking thing slips from him altogether.

“You can be perfectly compatible and still not be able to trust each other.”

He doesn’t know how to answer that, so he focuses on rolling his hands into fists, rolling and unrolling, working the feeling back into his muscles. He’s moved on to his toes by the time Bucky speaks again.

“How do we increase our synchronization rate?”

She finishes unhooking him and places his headset next to Steve’s on the table beside the console.

“It’ll get higher over time, the more you drift. Whether or not it gets high enough is up to the two of you.”

She snaps off her gloves. “My advice? Start talking about it. Whatever you might instinctively try to keep each other from seeing, all the weird shit in your heads. Just lay it all on the table. Strong neural handshake comes from trust, so...” She pauses at the doorway. "No secrets from your copilot."

_Ah, fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More EVA mythology here for those of you keeping track, which I am sure is no one, but there it is. I can't really get into it too much without like spoiler-ing my own fic but, uh, the jaegers having a consciousness of their own (like an EVA unit) is pretty central to this whole thing, so bear with me.  
> Caitlin Lightcap invented the drift by accident trying to save a demo pilot in danger of neural overload, essentially paving the way for the jaeger program to continue to exist and develop.  
> I dunno, I feel like Riley is just a sort of natural counterpoint to the very chill energy that Sam has. I love the idea of Sam having a really loud, enthusiastic best friend who's just this wildly vocal cheerleader who's always so supportive, so pumped to be piloting with him, doing anything with him, and he's just quietly feeling the exact same way but he doesn't have to yell about it because that's Riley's job.  
> Sharon loves angry nineties singer-songwriters #confirmed.  
> Beer pong is an infuriating game to me because everyone always just goes, "No, your wrist is wrong, do your wrist like this," and then they just throw the stupid ping-pong ball and their wrist looks like every other wrist on earth and I just hate it. I have been in Steve's position and it is not a good time. They make you keep playing if you lose, you know that? It's cruel.  
> Comments and feedback are welcome, as always, and sorry for not updating sooner. Hopefully I will be back very soon xxx


	8. seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is it any wonder that Steve "he said 'Bucky' and suddenly I was a 16-year-old kid again in Brooklyn" Rogers is unable to deal with a crush?

He stabs at his commissary eggs, which were definitely very recently powder, and scowls. Bucky is making his way across the mess with a tray of his own, looking markedly more chipper. He bangs down the tray and pulls out a chair. “You’re up early for once.”

 _I was afraid to be alone with you_.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

Bucky’s face does something quick and unreadable. “Because of the drift?”

He shrugs. “Maybe. Dunno.”

Bucky looks at him for a long moment, apparently deciding whether or not to push it, and then drops his eyes to his tray. They sit in silence for a few moments, during which time Bucky takes it upon himself to insert an entire piece of toast into his mouth at once, almost chokes, and finally succeeds at the basic human task of eating. Having defeated the toast, he beams at Steve. Steve’s trying so hard not to be charmed ( _more_ charmed), digging his fingers into his knee under the table and cultivating an almost laserlike focus on his sad fake eggs. He can feel Bucky’s smile like a spotlight turned on him, a physical warmth, like the sun is shining on him and him alone. _Christ on a bicycle, Steve_.

“What?”

He looks up. Bucky’s making an I-didn’t-catch-that face. “Was I talking?”

“I thought so.”

“Oh.” He sets his fork down. “I don’t… think I was.”

 _Sam_. He needs to talk to Sam. He picks the fork back up and stands up from the table. He puts the fork back down. He picks up his plate of eggs, uneaten but very stabbed, and then puts it down. He puts the fork on the plate and picks it up again. Okay. Yes. He looks down at Bucky, who’s got his head propped on his left hand, the corner of his mouth tipped up in a wry but not unkind smile. His eyes are so blue.

 _Sam_. He thinks it so forcefully he almost says it out loud, and then he does. “Sam.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow.

“I have to talk to Sam,” he says, and then he leaves the cafeteria and he’s all the way down the hall before he realizes he’s still carrying the fucking plate of eggs.

_You got it bad, huh._

* * *

“Hey,” he says, opening the door to their room a little too hard. “Uh, hey. Sorry.”

Sam and Riley are sprawled on the floor looking at a reproduction jaeger blueprint.

“Hey, Rogers.” Riley shifts the toothpick he’s chewing on to the other side of his mouth. “You brought us breakfast?”

He gestures helplessly with the plate. “I forgot I had it.”

Riley stretches out one of those long arms. “Give it here.”

Steve sits on the bed and hands it down, watches Riley eat the entire plate of food in approximately four bites. Sam makes a mildly disgusted sound, then rolls to his feet in what looks like a single motion. He folds his arms and looks at Steve. “You okay? You look…”

“Bad,” Riley supplies brightly. Sam rolls his eyes but nods all the same. “You do look a little, uh, peaky.”

He’s becoming very aware that he has no idea how to proceed here, has no idea about anything right now beyond _talk to Sam_ , and why? Because half a year ago he saw what Steve still barely acknowledges to himself. _You got it bad_.

“Um,” he says after an agonizing pause. “I have a question.”

Sam rolls his hand at him, _go ahead_. Steve’s gaze flicks to Riley involuntarily.

“You need me to leave?”

He starts to protest, but Riley’s already bouncing up off the floor. He squeezes Sam’s shoulder. “I’ll be in the gym.” He looks at Steve sympathetically. “Good luck, bud.”

He closes the door behind him, a tiny considerate gesture that makes Steve wish he’d told him to stay. Sam sits down next to him on the bed. “What’s up?”

He sighs. “I’m worried about our synch rate.”

“Well, fuck, Steve, it’s your first drift-”

“No,” he interrupts. “It’s not just that. It’s-”

He scuffs the toe of his boot along the floor. “Have you heard about the modesty reflex?”

Sam stays quiet.

“I’m afraid that - oh, God.” He puts his face in his hands. “This is so _stupid_.”

It’s easier to say if he’s not looking at Sam, so he goes for it.

“Remember in the courtyard last year, before the pineapple, uh, when you said-”

“Mm.”

“Well, it - I -” Deep breath, Rogers. Lord above. They’re just words. “If it was bad then, it’s… it’s _really_ bad now.”

He peeks at Sam, who’s doing his level best not to smile. “Home stretch, Rogers,” he says gently. Steve takes a breath and continues.

“I’m afraid he’s going to see it in the drift and I’m afraid that I’ll try to hide it and get us both killed. Agent Hill said we have to tell each other everything so that whatever comes up, we don’t bother to try to hide it, but I don’t know-”

He rubs his hands down his face and lets them fall into his lap.

“I’m afraid he won’t want to pilot with me if he knows.”

Sam nods slowly, as if considering.

“So - my question-”

He motions at Riley’s cot.

“Is there anything you’d hide from him? I know you were friends before you came here, but-”

Sam smiles for real now. “Friends?”

Steve stops, jarred out of his train of thought. “Were you not? I thought-”

“Boyfriends, Rogers. C’mon. You really didn’t know?”

The word _boyfriends_ slams into his chest like a ton of bricks, the sheer sweet casualness of it, the sureness with which he says it.

“I didn’t,” he says wonderingly. “I guess I didn’t - think about it.” He tries to remember if he’s ever seen them do anything that would indicate _boyfriends_. He feels pinned by that word, by its possibility, its mere presence in the room with them.

Sam laughs. “We keep it pretty PG.”

“What’s it like when you drift?” Steve blurts before he can stop himself. “Did- were you worried- is there anything-” God, he wishes he could just calm the _fuck_ down.

“Yeah, I mean, we both figure we’re gonna see some shit we might not love, but-” Sam shrugs. “That’s a normal part of dating, right? Knowing that you both have a past. Drifting just means you might, like, _see_ it.”

He looks at Steve, and of course everything is written all over his stupid face, and he is eternally grateful for how gently Sam asks.

“Rogers, have you ever dated anyone?”

He doesn’t have to answer, but he does. Might as well get used to saying all the weird, embarrassing shit out loud.

“No.” He waves his hand halfheartedly, trying to encompass his whole being. “Never… never really found the right person.”

Sam nods solemnly, and Steve can’t see anything in his face but understanding. His heart squeezes.

“But you think Barnes is the guy.”

“Jesus, Sam.” The bluntness of it takes his breath away. “I don’t - I don’t know what I think.”

He’s almost impressed at how far Sam can raise his eyebrows. He’s definitely impressed that he refrains from calling his bluff.

“Well, look. I don’t know if it’s possible to suppress things in the drift. Hill probably knows better than anyone, except maybe Fury, but I doubt she’s wrong. But maybe…” Sam falls silent, thinking. “Maybe she’s being too broad.”

“What do you mean?”

Sam gets up and starts pacing. “You get some emotional transference in the bridge, right, but it’s tied to your memories, right?”

“I guess.”

“She said you should tell your secrets because she’s assuming they pertain to memories. But yours doesn’t. Yours is right now.” He stops walking and looks at Steve. “It’s not a memory.”

“So it wouldn’t show up.”

“I don’t think so,” Sam says. “But I don’t know.”

Steve sighs. “I guess all I can do is try.”

* * *

Their synch rate is lower this time, markedly lower, and he’s furious with himself. Every time he tries to let go, tries to put himself into the drift, fear and embarrassment boomerang his consciousness back to him. He can feel Bucky reaching for him, feels his fingertips just brush by, like a trapeze artist missing the catch, and every time he plummets back down into his body with a muttered curse. After almost forty minutes with no success, never maxing above a twenty percent synch rate, Hill says, “That’s enough,” and unhooks them. She barely gives them a backward glance as she leaves the chamber.

He pushes himself up out of the chair, head lowered. “Sorry,” he mumbles, keeping his eyes down. There’s no answer, but he feels Bucky’s nearness, feels warmth and anger radiating from him. He’s about to say something - what, he doesn’t know - when Bucky puts his hand on Steve’s chest and shoves him backward into the wall. Dimly, he registers how gentle a motion it is, registers that Bucky doesn’t drop his hand as he leans forward, but all of this is secondary to how _close_ he is, close enough for Steve to see the flecks of gray in his eyes, close enough to -

“What is going on with you?” Bucky hisses, breaking his reverie. “We’re down _twenty percent_.”

He swallows hard. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I-”

“I thought you wanted to pilot.” Bucky’s hand isn’t pinning him to the wall so much as it’s just resting on him, his thumb in the notch of Steve’s sternum, and there’s no doubt he feels Steve’s heart hammering. He takes a deep breath, but Bucky’s not done.

“I thought you were with me, Rogers. You - I-” He laughs, but it sounds more like a snarl. “You said you’d stay. So _I_ stayed.”

“Buck-”

“I’m not doing this again. If I don’t make it this time I’m gone, I’m out, I’ll let them transfer me to the Wall, I don’t care, but I thought-”

Steve is horrified to see tears glinting in Bucky’s eyes.

“I thought we could make it. You made me think we could make it.”

“We can!” His voice cracks. Bucky narrows his eyes.

“Then you have to decide, Steve. Right now. Whatever you’re hiding, is it worth being a pilot?”

He gives him another little push and then drops his hand. “I’m going upstairs,” he says darkly. “Come find me when you’re ready.”

Steve just stands there pressed against the wall, eyes stinging, until the motion-detector lights go out.

* * *

He knocks before he enters. He doesn’t know why, it just seems like the right thing to do. He doesn’t hear anything, so he turns the little wheel and shoulders the door open.

Bucky is lying on his bed scribbling in a notebook, his hair haphazardly pulled back. He looks up at Steve. “Hey.”

Steve shuts the door and looks around the room, wondering if this is the last time he’ll see it. Wondering if he’ll be on a bus to the Wall within the hour. He sits down on his own bed uneasily, keeping his feet on the floor. Bucky caps his pen and shoves it behind his ear. Then he sits up, pulling his legs around in front of him, and raises his eyebrows at Steve.

“Okay,” Steve says. “Okay. I know I can’t… ask you not to quit. But I’m afraid you’ll want to. And that’s why I haven’t- you know. Told you.” He wishes desperately for a kaiju drill, a meteor, anything to end this. Bucky waits, arms folded, impassive as a statue.

“Okay,” he says again. He licks his lips. His foot jitters nervously against the floor, the _tap-tap-tap_ of the steel toe muted by the concrete. He looks down at his hands and takes a deep breath.

“I, um. Have. I have feelings for you.”

The room is so quiet. He can hear Bucky’s breath rasping in and out but for once he can’t read it, can’t tell what he’s feeling.

“Uh.” He clears his throat. “R.. romantic… feelings. I guess. Is what you’d call them.”

 _Maybe if I break all my fingers at once I’ll black out_.

“So. That’s… all.”

Silence.

“It’s not a big deal or anything,” he tells his hands. “I just didn’t want you to see it in the drift and freak out - but then I didn’t want to tell you in case you freaked out - so I thought maybe I could just hide it, you know, and anyway I’m sure it will probably go away on its own, it’s really not a big deal, so I wouldn’t even worry about it, but probably now that you know the drift will be fine again, and that’s what counts, so.” He pauses for breath. It feels like he’s been sprinting. He’s about to start talking again just to fill the fucking silence when Bucky finally, blessedly speaks.

“Okay.”

He lifts his head. Bucky still hasn’t moved; he’s sitting there cross-legged on his bed looking right at Steve.

“Why did you think I would quit?”

Relief and bitter disappointment wash through him in equal measure.

“I don’t know,” he says, fighting to keep the tremor out of his voice. “Close quarters, I guess. You never know how people will react.”

“Jesus, Steve. It’s not like it’s the forties or something.”

A tear spills down his cheek and he jams the heel of his hand into his eye, hoping Bucky hasn’t seen. “Yeah, I know.”

He stands abruptly, jerkily, and says, “Okay, well. So. Now you know, so that’s good. Now the drift will go better. Okay.”

Then he turns on his heel and leaves the room. He hears Bucky say, “Steve-” but the rest of his words are cut off by the slam of the door, and he doesn’t wait to see if he’s coming after him. He darts down the hall, winding into the rat-maze of corridors through the sleeping quarters and out into the Shatterdome. He wanders through the garage, sparks drifting down from above him as the jaegers’ mechanics swing around them in the gloom. He stops near the Falcon’s left foot, peering up at it. _Never thought I’d miss Mechanics_ , he thinks, and the Falcon’s giant hand blurs as tears fill his eyes. He keeps walking.

He finds his way up to the greenhouse after awhile, the entire floor of the Dome that’s been designated for the base's agriculture. He makes his way through the rows of leafy greenness, humidity beading on his skin, and when he’s finally lost he sits down in the dirt and cries. He sits there with his head in his hands, tears and sweat and dew mixing on his face, and he wrings his heart out.

The sunlights dim as he sits there, the simulated moonrise filling the greenhouse, silvering the leaves. After awhile he wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his jumpsuit and gets up.

He doesn’t knock this time, he’s not thinking about it, but Bucky barely flinches as the door opens. He’s still writing in his notebook, a stray lock of hair drifting past his face toward the page. He puts the pen down and looks up at Steve. “Hey,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“What? Why?”

“I wasn’t super helpful, before.” He closes the book and flops off the bed, stretching as he unfolds to his full height and moves toward him.

“I didn’t mean to - dismiss - that you’d be scared,” he says carefully, his dark eyes serious as they find Steve’s. “I just meant that you don’t need to be, with me.”

Steve nods. “I know, Buck. Thank you.”

Bucky raises a hand and places his thumb delicately on Steve’s face, stroking his cheekbone, fingertips skimming his jaw.

“You're covered in dirt,” he says, pulling his hand back. “Were you in the greenhouse?”

Steve closes his eyes, tries to silence his traitorous racing heart.

“Yeah, I was,” he answers, when he’s sure his voice won’t shake. “It’s a good place to be alone. Smells good in there. Reminds me of home.”

“Yeah? You do a lot of gardening in Brooklyn?”

“I’ll have you know there are many thriving community gardens in our fair city, a fact you might have overlooked while you were learning to box-”

“Yeah, jeez, what a useless skill that turned out to be-”

Steve watches Bucky smile as they banter, feels his own tension ease as they sink back into now-familiar roles, and it only feels a little like a lie when he thinks, _This is okay. I can live with this._

* * *

He opens his eyes in their darkened room, focusing drowsily on the clock. Midnight, just about. He rolls over and sees a thin spear of light under the bathroom door. He shifts so that his arm is under the pillow, curling himself tighter. His eyes are drifting shut when he hears a small sound, a sharp intake of breath.

He opens his eyes again and picks his head up a fraction, listening.

After a moment he hears it again, a choked sob, a shuddering exhale. He sits up, swings his feet out of bed, the concrete cold and quiet under him as he slips toward the door. He’s not sure what he’s going to do, exactly, but he finds himself leaning toward the thin metal sheet until his ear almost touches it.

He hears harsh, ragged breathing and his lungs hitch in sympathy. He’s reaching out to knock, to ask _are you okay, is something wrong, do you need me,_ and then Bucky inhales sharply and makes a sound in his throat that stutters up into a whimper and Steve realizes abruptly that he’s not crying, and his whole body turns to ice and then to fire and then he’s flinging himself back onto his bed, the metal frame creaking as he yanks the blanket over his head. He closes his eyes and tries not to imagine what’s going on behind that door, what Bucky’s face must look like -

Heat blossoms deep in his belly and he slides one hand over his face, bites down on his wrist and presses his hips into the mattress, trying to quiet the sudden ache he feels. He grabs the pillow and folds it over his head, clasps it against both ears, and then he lies awake for the rest of the night trying and failing not to think, _I don’t know if I can live with this._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen i'm as upset as you are, but it is just a fact that steve lacks game and chill and really any kind of coping-with-feelings skills. he is an innocent awkward angel who just wants to be loved and i hate making him suffer but needs must when the devil drives. uh, very little plot advancement in this chapter, sorry about that, they're going to get in a real jaeger next time i promise. thank you for still being here, as always i would love to chat with u about giant robots/our gay supersoldier boyfriends, i will see you soon xoxo


	9. eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We could have made them look like anything, and we made them look like us. (Or: the jaeger as a mirror, Steve pulls a little bit of a Yuri Katsuki, Bucky continues to mystify and annoy.)

 They hit sixty percent on a Saturday.

He knows it's Saturday because they got to sleep in an extra half hour, and there were reconstituted French toast sticks in the mess. The days pass and the lights go on and off and he doesn't think about Bucky except when he has to and he never knows what day it is but today, the day they hit sixty percent, today is Saturday.

He would have known they'd hit sixty even if Hill hadn't yelped when it happened; he felt it, like something clicking into place. The drift _took_ , like a roller coaster car suddenly lurching up the incline.

The reaction was physical for both of them. Bucky made a sound like he'd been burned, a surprised hiss that had an edge of fear to it. Steve's hands snapped shut faster than he'd thought they could move with the integration fluid coursing through his veins. It felt like someone had kicked him in the chest, driven all the air from his lungs, and then he inhaled and the drift flooded over him, overtook him fully, and now they are here.

He can see the cockpit around them, the simulated body of the jaeger. He feels Bucky’s mind nestled up against his own, spilling into it, a rush of emotions and memories as the bridge sinks its filaments deeper into their brains, digging and searching.

“Holy fuck,” he breathes, and Bucky says, “Yeah.”

“How does it feel, boys?”

“Incredible,” Bucky says, and Steve feels it in his chest. The joy, the terror, the sheer wonder. He can't tell if it's his emotion or Bucky's but then he realizes it's both of theirs.

“One mind,” he whispers. He feels Bucky smile.

* * *

Later they're lying on the couch in their room, shoulders touching, staring at the ceiling.

Bucky had flopped down first, thumped the spot next to him, and said, “Velcro.” So Steve had sat down tentatively, shifted his weight slowly and carefully until he was on his back next to him. He left space between them on purpose, but as soon as he was lying all the way down Bucky wriggled toward him, heaving a contented sigh.

“We did it, Stevie.”

“Thanks for not giving up on me,” he says to the ceiling.

“Ah, come on. I never really doubted.”

He knocks his elbow into Bucky’s ribs, gently.

“All right, maybe I doubted a little.”

“But we did it.”

“Hell yeah, we did it.”

He feels Bucky roll toward him and keeps his eyes on the ceiling.

“What rig d’you think they'll put us in?”

“One of the junkers,” Bucky says, his voice already sleepy. “Short tether.”

“Not going straight to the Soldier, huh?”

“‘s that the one you like best?”

He sighs. “I dunno. I like the color scheme.”

“Of course you do. Star-spangled boy.”

“Just because I like _color-”_

“Rogers, everything you own has a flag print on it.”

“I have one pair of swim trunks-”

“And your towel, and all your socks-”

“My mom sends me those!”

“Mmhm.” He's close to falling asleep, Steve can tell.

“Which one would you want, then?”

“Iunno. I like the Spider pretty well.”

“All those arms, really?”

“Mm. Don't need to carry a weapon when you have extra arms.”

“I guess. What about the Hulk?”

“I think we need something with a little more stealth. Sneaky.” His voice is soft, trailing off.

“How sneaky can a giant robot be?”

“Mm.”

“‘Kay, Buck.”

Bucky makes a little grumbling sound, like a cat that's been interrupted mid-purr, and moves closer to him.

He’s more than half-asleep, he's just come off a drift, he's gravitating toward warmth and familiarity. Steve knows this. He does. They need this closeness, and he knows it can't mean what he wants it to.

But he's going to be a pilot. They're going to be pilots, and that matters more than whatever he feels. He won't jeopardize their shot at this.

He rolls over to face the wall, and Bucky doesn't move to close the space between them. He's asleep, his breathing soft and even, and the last thing Steve thinks before he falls asleep is _longing._

* * *

The jaeger is a Mark I, a squat clunky bucket of bolts that's about as far from the sleek models in Mechanics as a pony is from a gazelle.

“Lehigh,” Hill says from behind the glass. “Doesn't go far, but we're just hoping to get you out the bay door today.”

Steve peers up at the control booth. “Is that glass bulletproof?”

“Come on up the ladder, please.”

Bucky shoves his shoulder gently and he steps forward. The ladder is just a series of metal rungs welded to the wall of the bay, and he wonders how old the joins are as he climbs. He can't feel any give beneath him, but he can feel himself getting more anxious as he nears the platform. He was used to Mechanics, the sleek harnesses, the way they'd zip up and down around the jaegers, like flying. He hasn't been in Mechanics for awhile, and he hasn't climbed a ladder in even longer.

Hill is standing at the door to the observation booth when he clambers over the edge, working his fingers into the metal grille of the platform with a little too much relief. Bucky vaults up like a cat, barely missing him, and bounds over to her.

“Ravishing as always,” he says. Then, clocking her expression, he adds, “Ma'am.”

“Commander,” she murmurs, standing aside to let them in.

“Commander. Sorry. I'm all aflutter.”

He's only half-joking, Steve knows. He feels it too, honestly, the nervous tightening in the pit of his stomach, the sizzling feeling in his fingertips. They're ready.

“Suit up,” she says. “Then get in the bullet.”

Both of them look at the pod in the corner of the room. She reads their gazes correctly.

“We plug that right into the base of its neck.”

She walks toward the window and taps it. “The entry port is right there.”

“I..” Steve falters, embarrassed. “I spent almost a year in Mechanics and I never realized the chambers came out.”

“It's a lot harder to tell with the Mark IIs. The kaiju started to figure out where the bullet was, they'd pry it right out of the back of the jaeger. So we actually sank the ports in the new ones, then buried that under another plate. That one moves, but you wouldn't know it to look at it, and you weren't really high-clearance enough in Mechanics to have been needed inside the brain.”

He's stung, but he knows she's right.

“Why is this glass bulletproof?”

Bucky is standing at the window, one hand pressed to the glass as he looks down at the jaeger.

Hill shifts her weight.

“The connection between the jaeger and the pilots takes awhile to break, you know.”

They stay silent.

“If something should happen, if the machine should-” She clears her throat. “The control room is protected.”

Bucky nods. “If one of us chases the rabbit.”

Her eyes flick sideways, so fast he almost misses it. “Yes.”

Steve watches her as he shrugs off his track pants and slips into the jumpsuit. Her back is to them as she gazes down at the jaeger, her profile just visible as she looks from the machine to the control table in front of her.

He hears the hiss of Bucky’s jumpsuit and looks at him. Bucky smiles at him, that cocky lopsided grin, but there's a flicker of fear in his eyes. Steve reaches out, claps him on the shoulder.

“Let's do this.”

The pod has no window. Or rather, the pod has a featureless display screen that, when connected to the jaeger’s eyes, will show them the outside world. The chairs are narrow and the helmets are bolted to them. Steve and Bucky are so close together that if they could move more than an inch they could hold hands.

All in all, it's an uncomfortable place to be.

“The pods in the Mark IIs are bigger,” Hill’s voice says into his ear. “We take pilot feedback very seriously.”

“Well, and the Mark IIs’ bodies are bigger.”

“Let me pretend we're kind. Now hush.”

The pod starts to hum, kind of. It sounds like a train is rushing overhead.

“Like an MRI,” Bucky remarks.

“What?”

The pod starts to move, tilting as it does, and the humming gets louder. There is a sliding metal sound, verging on painful, and just when Steve thinks he can't take it anymore there's a loud _clang_ and the pod stops.

“Pilots in place.”

Hill sounds excited.

“Pilots ready?”

His mouth is dry, and it's basically a croak when he says, “Ready.”

Bucky sounds like he's going to throw up, but whether from happiness or fear Steve can't tell. “Ready.”

There is a pause like the whole world is inhaling and then someone slams on a floodlight that shoots through his eyeballs and bounces off the inside of his skull.

It's like the first time they drifted, only magnified and refracting and shattering through his mind. Like his whole mind is a hall of mirrors and all the mirrors are crumpling, bouncing light around like it's goddamn _Indiana Jones,_ until the cavern of the drift is filled with it. He reaches for Bucky and feels the handshake take, stronger than it's ever been, and happiness floods his entire body. He feels it coming off of Bucky too, and he doesn't know why it feels like this but he hopes it always does, always. Bucky whoops into his headset and Steve laughs.

Then he feels something new, a third presence in the drift. The seeking feeling that he's always assumed was the bridge is back, stronger than ever, and suddenly it opens its eyes and peers at him and he realizes it's the jaeger.

_Oh._

“It's alive,” he breathes.

The jaeger’s mind nuzzles up against theirs, scenting, searching, and suddenly the screen in front of them floods with color.

“Pilots.” Hill smiles. “Welcome to a real drift.”

He flexes his fingers gently. The jaeger doesn't move.

“What happens now?” Bucky's voice is rough with excitement.

“The integration fluid that's running through your veins right now is circulating through the jaeger. It mirrors the electrical impulses in your brain into the jaeger’s. Got it?”

“No.”

Hill sighs. “Visualize yourself raising your right hand.”

He feels it happen before he even consciously forms the thought. The jaeger’s hand lifts. He can't even see it through the window, shouldn't know that anything’s happened, but he feels it. The weight of it, the tension, the pull of muscles.

“Buck,” he says. “Do you-”

“Yeah.”

The jaeger’s hand closes into a fist. It swings up, toward its face, and stops. The fingers open and close.

Steve's not sure which of them is doing it, which he guesses is maybe the point. Like a Ouija board, they're both making the tiniest of subconscious suggestions that the other is picking up on through the drift, letting them work as one.

“How come we can see the hand?” Bucky asks.

“What do you mean?”

“We’re in its heart, right? In the chest. But it feels like the hand is at eye level, and we're looking right at it.

“The jaeger’s visual field is displayed inside the plug,” Hill says over the comm. “You're in Lehigh’s heart, extremely well-protected, but you're seeing out of its eyes.”

“That's why you can't see when the power’s gone,” Steve realizes. “It's just a display.”

“Yes. Remember that when you're fighting as well- it's human instinct to protect your face and head, but now you'll need to protect the heart of the machine, where you are.”

“That explains some of the more intensive drills,” Bucky grumbles. Steve has a painfully vivid flashback to a night after one of those, Bucky lifting his shirt to reveal lines of purple-black bruises printed across his torso, wincing as his ribs moved with his breath. Steve's always been a defensive fighter, he doesn't have as much trouble with it, but Bucky’s instinct is always to go for the throat. He doesn't wait to get hit, so he doesn't really know how.

Steve knows how.

He lets his body drop into a fighting stance, hands loose and relaxed and out in front of him, and he knows he's sitting immobilized in the chair in the plug but he feels the jaeger move and it's like it's his own flesh.

“Fuck.”

“What?”

“I know I didn't do that.” Bucky's voice is full of wonder. “But it feels like I did.”

The jaeger straightens up, bounces from foot to foot like a boxer. The movements are strange, unfamiliar, but at the same time he feels as though they're tattooed on his bones and he realizes he's feeling Bucky’s body, too.

_This is what it feels like to be you._

Hill sounds almost amused when she crackles into the headset again.

“Are you ready to get this bucket of bolts moving?”

They turn toward the bay door, which creaks as it hitches upward. Glaring sunlight fills the hold.

“I think you're selling this guy short,” Bucky remarks, rolling its shoulders. “Seems pretty sturdy to me.”

“Well then, by all means, Barnes, get out there.”

They walk toward the door, not speaking, not even knowing they're breathing in sync.

“How long is-”

He's cut off by the sudden lurching halt of the jaeger, which he feels simultaneously as a casual pause in a normal motion and as the entire plug shaking around him, two sensations, two bodies, both equally real. It makes him nauseous for a moment, and before he can speak again, Bucky snaps into the silence.

“What the hell?”

Hill clears her throat. “Keep moving, please.”

“We _can’t_.”

“Your mind has to be stronger than the jaeger’s,” she says. “This is why we test with Lehigh.”

Steve stays quiet, focusing on trying to walk forward. Every time the jaeger refuses to move with him it throws him back into his body inside the plug, his eyelids flickering as he’s jarred out of sync. His mind fuzzes around the edges as it tries to inhabit two bodies at once.

“Commander.” Bucky’s voice is low and even. “Please explain what is happening.”

She sighs.

“The jaegers… have personalities. That’s the closest word I can give to what it actually is, but what it means is… They don’t always listen to us.”

Steve feels, distantly, that his nose has started bleeding.

“That’s… that’s one of the reasons it’s dangerous to synch too high. You don’t want the jaeger’s mind integrating with yours any more than it takes to direct it. It’s a very fine line.”

“So what does that mean? For us, right now?”

“You need to get the jaeger out of the bay,” she says flatly. “Work together. If you can’t get a jaeger to do what you want, you risk your own life, your copilot’s life, and the lives of everyone in the path of the kaiju you don’t stop.”

“You're shitting me,” Bucky snarls. “You built a machine with a goddamn mind of its own?”

“Watch it, Barnes.” Her tone lacks its usual bite, veering almost toward weariness. “It's a rudimentary consciousness, a very rough representation of a human brain. That's how it's able to understand the signals from your brain and replicate them.”

Steve parts his lips to speak, the coppery tang of his blood hitting his tongue almost immediately.

“How can it have ideas if it's just a mirror?”

She sighs. “Rogers, your faith in me is touching, but I’m not a fucking neurologist.”

_Fair._

“How do we control it, then?”

“Crush it,” she says simply. “It's a machine. It's a shell. It's a weapon, and if you can't use it in adverse conditions you're useless to us.”

A sourceless anger surfaces inside him.

The jaeger’s fists snap shut.

He feels Bucky’s mind tighten its grip on his, feels them mesh further into each other.

 _You ok?_ he asks. He can almost see it traveling across the bridge, but that's not quite right- the bridge isn't a bridge anymore, really, not something that connects two separate things, it's just _them_ , nothing between them, and Bucky's response is in his head before he finishes the thought.

_Yeah. You?_

_Five by._

_I can't tell how it's stopping us. Can't find its mind._

_Me neither._

They stand there motionless.

Steve feels around, eyes flickering aimlessly as he roams the drift. The feeling of being watched has diminished, and he wonders if the jaeger is hiding somehow.

 _I know it's your body,_ he thinks, hoping Bucky doesn't find this idea utterly stupid. _But we need it. We need you to help us._

A glimmer of something, faintly.

 _Look, pal._ Bucky's less tentative, less asking. _I'm pretty sure we can put you in a box in here if we try hard enough. But I don't wanna do that, I don't think we need to do that, right?_

“Pilots.” Hill’s voice rings out.

“Quiet,” Steve murmurs, not even hearing himself. He can feel the jaeger on the edges of the drift, like an animal just outside the circle cast by a fire.

 _It's okay,_ he says. _Trust me._

They step forward.

_It's okay._

Another step.

_Together._

They are directly underneath the bay door.

They're past the door, in the yard, and Steve feels his heart leap an instant before they start running and then they're flying, racing, the jaeger cutting across the earth like a javelin. He can't feel his real body anymore, only the jaeger’s as if it were his own, _their_ own, he knows Bucky can feel it too because they're inhabiting the same skin, they're together in the smooth fluid movements of the running, the motion that feels somehow like the flexing of muscles, and he laughs wild and high and it courses through both of them and they run, run, run.

* * *

His body hums, lying there in the dark next to Bucky. He closes his eyes, opens them again and stares into the darkness. Closes them again. Yearns for sleep. He can feel the blood beating in his temples.

Bucky makes a little sound in his throat and he feels it in the pit of his belly. He's lying so still, so flat, and Bucky is just _there,_ warm and sleeping, curled toward him like a question he knows he can't answer.

_Fuck._

He sits up.

* * *

The bar is one they've been to before, the trainees - it's a jaeger bar, mostly pilots and groupies looking for a thrill.

He won't admit it, but he's hoping for the latter.

He orders a kaiju blue, which he knows is in poor taste, but they work fast.

“Same color as the poison, almost as lethal,” he murmurs to himself before he knocks it back.

An hour later he's about four drinks in, really starting to roll, and he's thinking about putting something stupid on the jukebox. He wanders over and feeds it a dollar, flips through the cards. "The Lovecats", "Blue Letter". His hand freezes when he sees "Desperado". He shakes his head sharply and moves on, jabs a different button without looking at it and turns away.

He's halfway back to his seat before he turns around, stalks back to the jukebox and shoves in another dollar.

“You sure you don't wanna switch to something a little less electric?” the bartender asks as he slides the shot glass toward him. Steve makes a hand gesture that he hopes says something like _nah, man, I am good, I'm so good, I am the epitome of good and this does not taste like the mother of all hangovers even at all,_ and wraps his fingers around the glass. _Nailed it._

He turns away from the bar and smacks directly into someone.

“Ah, fuck,” he says, looking at his now-empty glass. “My drink.”

A large, warm hand closes over his and gently extricates the glass from his grip.

“Sorry about that. Let me get you another one.”

He looks up.

The guy attached to the hand is tall, with dark hair swept back from his face, and he's looking at Steve like a cat looks at a mouse.

His mouth is suddenly very dry. It hits him that four kaiju blues in an hour is definitely too many.

“Oh,” he manages to say, wincing as it rasps out. “Hi. Sorry about - sorry. I probably don't need another one.”

He's patting ineffectually at the guy’s shirt with his sleeve, trying to blot up some of the blue poison, and he feels his chest rumble as he laughs. His stomach does a lazy flip.

“It's okay,” the guy says. “Really. C’mere.”

He leads Steve to a booth in the corner, tucked under a little eave, and then disappears. Steve stares at the table, wondering if the wood grain is going to start rippling before his eyes. _I am very drunk_ , he thinks, and then another glass of blue slides into his field of vision. He leans backward, looks up at the dark-haired guy.

“Nooo,” he says. “You should. I should have bought it and you should drink it. I shouldn't drink it.”

The guy smiles and takes the drink, knocking it back in a single smooth motion. Steve watches the muscles in his neck move under his skin. 

He slides out of the booth and stands, swaying slightly. “I'm… be right back,” he says after a moment, and wheels away.

He stands in the little hallway that leads to the bathrooms, staring at the faded road signs on the wall. He's shaking. Only some of it is fear.

He closes his eyes and tries not to think about the warmth of Bucky sleeping next to him. Tries to imagine someone else in his place, someone who'd hold him, want him back. He aches with it, the wanting, the hollow knot that forms behind his sternum after a drift. The way he feels when Bucky looks at him and then looks away. He doesn't want it, any of it.

He opens his eyes and the guy is standing there, and it's so _obvious_ how much he looks like Bucky, fucking _pathetic_ , Steve, such a _fucking_ cliche, but he doesn't, at all, he's just some dark-haired guy with straight teeth - Steve doesn't know him, doesn't want him, doesn't dream about him, hasn't spent the last year inside his head, but he reaches out and grabs his shirt and yanks him forward.

The kiss lights him up from head to toe. The way it feels to be pressed against the wall, against _him_ , not a gap between their bodies. The guy bites Steve's neck and he takes a sharp breath, working his fingers into that dark hair, pulling his face closer. They move against each other, open mouths in the dim hallway, and the guy puts his hand on Steve's hip, he hooks a finger into his waistband, his hand slips lower and Steve's trying to think of something to say because no one’s ever - he's never - he's trying so hard not to think about Bucky - and then suddenly the weight pulls away from him, the warmth recedes, and there he is in the fucking flesh, hauling the dark-haired guy backward.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Rogers,” he growls, shoving the guy away from them. Steve knows he needs to say something, but instead he's just staring. How could he have thought - how could he have thought for even a _moment_  there was a resemblance? Bucky's standing there with his arms folded, eyes dark and angry, and he might as well be the only person in the world. _Goddamn it._  

_No one even comes close._

“This your boyfriend?”

The guy’s tone suggests this is laughable.

“No.” The disgust in his voice makes Steve wince. “But I am, apparently, his babysitter, so-”

He glares at Steve and jerks his head toward the door. “Let’s go.”

Heat floods his chest. “Why?”

Something flashes in Bucky’s eyes, too quick to read. “Rogers. Let’s go.”

“ _Why?_ ” he asks again, sharper than the first time. “Why do you give a shit-”

Bucky steps in close, puts his lips to Steve’s ear. “Please just come with me,” he says as quietly as he can. “You’re really drunk, and I just - I think you need to go to sleep. Alone.”

Steve plants a hand on his chest and pushes him away, just enough to look him in the eye. “You don’t want me to sleep with anyone?” 

He flushes, and it’s so pretty Steve wants to cry. “I don’t-” he starts to say, then stops and rakes his hand through his hair. “This isn’t a great place to be alone and drunk, Steve, and I’d just feel better if I knew you were safe at home-”

He blows his breath out angrily. “Just - will you please just - come the fuck with me already?”

Steve looks at him. Just looks at him, like he doesn’t have his face memorized. The dark-haired stranger puts a hand on his arm and starts to say something but Steve shakes his head no, his eyes never leaving Bucky’s, and the guy takes his hand away and just kind of melts back into the bar.

“I need food,” he says at last, and the relief on Bucky’s face almost kills him.

As they leave, he can hear the faint sound of "Desperado" fading in on the jukebox.

* * *

“Thanks,” he says as he flops onto the bed, bouncing his water bottle to the floor. Bucky scoops it up and hands it to him before perching at the foot of the bed.

“You went zero to sixty there, tiger,” Bucky says, looking at him.

Steve shoves another Pringle into his mouth. “Kaiju blue,” he says, trying and failing not to spray crumbs.

“That explains it.”

“Wha.”

“Your mouth.” His eyes are soft. “Completely blue.”

“Oh yeah?” Steve sticks out his tongue, tries to look at it. “Huh.”

Bucky unfolds himself gingerly down onto the bed, stretching out alongside him and reaching for the Pringles.

“You okay?”

Steve’s eyes are shut, the glow of the ceiling light pleasantly pink inside his head. “What d’you mean?”

“I dunno, you went out and got tanked in the middle of the night,” Bucky says drily. “Thought there might be a reason.”

“Oh.”

They’re quiet for a minute.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Steve says at last, which he knows is not an answer. Bucky shifts slightly beside him but doesn’t say anything. He keeps his eyes shut, lets the alcohol make him brave or stupid or both, and says, “I … wanted someone.”

He doesn't register the change in Bucky’s breathing.

“I wanted to not be alone.”

He sighs and opens his eyes to stare directly into the ceiling light.

“Stupid, I know.”

“Not stupid.”

Bucky's voice is very small all of a sudden.

“You shouldn't have to feel alone.”

“Yeah, but I don't have to give it up to the first guy I-” He shakes his head, makes a zipping motion in the general area of his mouth. “Sorry, sorry. You were right, though. Not a safe… not a safe thing to do.”

Bucky gets up to turn off the light.

“My eyes thank you,” Steve mumbles, rolling onto his side. Bucky settles down next to him, his weight pulling them both into the center of the mattress.

“Stevie,” he whispers after a few minutes.

“Mm.”

“Have you never - you know - with anyone?”

He's too drunk to be embarrassed, and too tired to lie. “Nah.”

“Oh.”

“Mm. Thanks f’r protecting my virtue,” he says, the words mashing together as they struggle to leave his mouth.

“Have-”

There's an embarrassed, strangled sound. “Never mind.”

“Wha.”

“Nothing.”

“C’mon.”

“Have you done - anything? With anyone?”

“‘S a little personal, isn’ it?”

He's not capable of parsing this right now, dissecting it, wondering _why._ If he's being honest, the odds are good he won't even remember this tomorrow. Kaiju blue’s particular combination of alcohols is what some pilots call a mind-eraser, and deep down some part of him knew that when he ordered.

 _Fuck it,_ his brain says, so clearly he almost actually shrugs.

“No,” he says. “I haven't.”

He can feel Bucky breathing, waiting.

“Sad, huh.”

“No,” he says sharply. His hand closes on Steve's wrist in the dark. “No, it's not.”

Neither of them speaks again. Bucky's hand is still wrapped around his wrist.

Slowly, as slowly as he can, holding his breath, Steve turns his hand in Bucky’s grasp. Gently, tentatively, he moves until their palms are barely touching. His heart is hammering in his chest, his throat, his temples. He presses his fingers forward, lightly, the barest brush of skin on skin as his fingertips meet Bucky’s and slip just past them, and then he stills.

He takes a trembling breath.

Bucky's hand moves almost convulsively, threading his fingers fully into Steve’s, clasping their hands together in one swift movement.

He gasps; he can't help it. The air rushes out of his lungs like he's been punched in the gut, and he wants to be mad that he's this affected by it but all he can do is close his eyes and pray it never ends.

Bucky's thumb strokes the back of his hand, sending a shuddery wave through his whole body. His grip tightens reflexively and he worries Bucky will pull away but he doesn't.

Steve lies there and listens to him breathe and he thinks _please, please, please_ , and before he can get any further he's asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> doot doot doot i'm back. new job is not quite yet in full swing but it is surely in some kind of swing and it is kicking my ass. but here i am, and here are my sad gay idiots, i hate making them suffer but i keep doing it, what is wrong with me, right? anyway big ups to @mutationalfalsetto who is my rock/a very tolerant idea-bouncer-offer, pls comment if you are still keeping up, they have finally gotten in the robot, they will get in at least one more robot before anything else bad happens, i promise you. thank you for still being here! it is so very very appreciated! xxxxxx


	10. nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their first kaiju. Their first something else.

Steve sits in the Howler’s palm, gazing out at the ocean. The jaeger is waist-deep, the lapping water pushing it into the gentlest of sways. _Like a big hammock_ , he thinks. He tips his head back and lets the midwinter sun fall on his face. It’s almost a year to the day since their first test with Lehigh.

Bucky scrambles up onto the Howler’s hand, pulling himself into the shallow, car-sized depression and rolling until he thuds gently against Steve’s leg.

“Fine,” he sighs. “Go do your thing.”

Steve pats him gently on the shoulder. “You tried. Gold star.”

Bucky flips him a lazy middle finger and splays himself out like a starfish, the furry hood of his coat framing his face. “At least it's nice out today.”

“Yeah, I forgot, you had a really tough time last month when I froze to the hull-”

“I had to peel you off!” Bucky protests, albeit halfheartedly. “Whatever. Go, fix. I'll just be here.” He flops his arm dramatically over his eyes.

Steve steps over the Howler’s thumb and coasts gently down his tether.

After his embarrassment with the entry ports, he'd gotten Hill to take him on a detailed tour of the jaegers’ interiors. She had assigned one of the newer mechanics, Wanda, to be his unofficial sponsor. She could dissect a jaeger's heart in less than twelve hours and put it back together in a neat twenty-four. She knew every machine inside and out and, more importantly, she didn't mind Steve bumbling along behind her while she worked. She didn't talk much, but her small deft hands moved precisely, visibly, and he found that he understood better when she didn't say anything at all. She just moved through the heart, slowly, surely, and everything she touched became something he recognized. She'd made him a better pilot. She'd given him the Howler. 

He shimmies into the heart of the Howler now, the giant blue core glowing above him, and pauses. It always makes him feel like a superhero somehow, knowing that he can control this thing, this huge, terrible power. He can  _protect_ people. It feels like a miracle.

Wanda had found him inside the jaeger one day about six months ago, tinkering with a circuit. He didn't notice her at first, too absorbed in what he was doing, but when he looked up she was watching him with a cool, appraising smile.

"You like this one," she said, her heavy accent giving the words an odd solemnity. "She speaks to you."

He blushed, looked away, unsure why the idea was embarrassing to him. "Sure."

"This is good thing. Pilots, jaegers, they must communicate. The relationship. If you like each other, it is easier."

Her smile was sharp, and very sweet. 

"What about the co-pilot?"

"Barnes," she'd said, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "If Howler speaks to you, she will speak also to him. You are connected."

He couldn't meet her eyes again after that, and when he finally looked up from the circuit he'd repaired she was gone. 

The next morning, they'd been assigned to the Howler. 

He wedges his way under a panel that is far too hot to the touch, especially given it's about ten degrees outside the jaeger. The metal sears the bare skin of his cheek as he wriggles by and he hisses, twisting his head sharply away and clanging it into a venting port. "All right," he mutters, dropping to his hands and knees to crawl the rest of the way in. "You win."

After an aggravating forty minutes he clips back into his tether. He swings back up into the Howler’s hand, attempting a smooth landing and instead skidding to an undignified crouch. Bucky’s eyes flicker as he looks him over. “Still overheating?”

“What gave it away,” Steve mutters, righting himself.

Cold fingers graze his cheekbone. "You left some face behind." 

He turns his head and pushes himself up to standing, the place where Bucky touched him warmer than the burn. "Yeah, there's... one of the couplers is fried, I think. Or close to it. Even out here it's too hot."

The Howler's been off the coast for two months now, weathering the wind and waves and seagulls. The cold air and frigid water were supposed to help bring her core temperature down, stabilize her insides while they figured out what was wrong with her. But Steve has exhausted his list of potential fixes, and the Howler shows no signs of cooling down. The cores are hellaciously expensive, and he's not sure he can convince Fury not to junk the Howler. 

"Will it run?" Bucky asks now, standing and brushing off his knees. 

"Yeah," Steve says, running a hand through his hair. He half-notes Bucky's amused glance and makes a sad attempt to flatten it. "They'll run until they disintegrate, you know? She'll definitely fight. But if we can't figure out what's wrong with the core it'll melt right out of her, and then we won't even be able to replace it."

"So we're dry-docked." His voice is dour. Steve can't help his hackles going up a little; he's doing his best. He's maybe too sharp when he says, "Yeah, I guess so. Sorry."

"Aw, Stevie-" 

Bucky touches his shoulder tentatively, pulling his hand back like he's burned it. "I'm sorry. I didn't-"

"I know," Steve says, turning further away. If he keeps this up he'll do a complete 360 right back into Bucky's stupid perfect face. "It's just frustrating."

"We'll figure it out, Stevie." A gentle nudge with the shoulder. "Well, you and Wanda. I'll be appropriately dazzled."

He feels an almost-smile tug at the corner of his lips. 

"Well, let's at least slosh around a little before we go in. Shake off the barnacles."

"Yeah, yeah. Gotta keep shiny."

"You said it, starboy, not me."

The waves break beneath them. The wind whistles against the hull of the jaeger. They make their way back into the Howler.

* * *

They've never talked about it, the way the velcroing has evolved since that day after Lehigh. Nothing has happened - nothing that Steve would _like_ to have happened has happened - but something is happening, maybe. He doesn't dare to look at it too closely, to expose it to the harsh light of day. The night after their first fighting lesson, Bucky rolled into him and he was too sleepy to be cautious, he simply folded himself around him and pressed his face into his soft dark hair - and then he froze, jolted fully awake, and he was opening his mouth to apologize when Bucky wriggled closer against him and sighed contentedly. He didn't sleep at all that night, his heart hammering, breath coming in dizzy fits and starts, and the next morning they had disentangled themselves and Bucky didn't say anything and so he didn't either, but the next time after they drifted Bucky took his hand and pulled his arm over him like a blanket, and every time after that it was the same. It isn't enough, and it doesn't mean what he wants it to mean, but in the dead of night with Bucky wrapped in his arms all he can think is that he'd rather have this than nothing at all. It's easier to bear when they're pressed together in the dark, in the strange heady aftermath of the drift. In the morning, in the real world, he knows who he is and who he is not, what he's worthy of. But he can have this; he can be a comfort. He can be Bucky's copilot and they can weather the dark together. 

Tonight, though. The rise and fall of Bucky's chest under his arm, the thud of his heartbeat beneath Steve's palm: he's lulled into boldness, into a foggy recklessness. 

"Buck," he whispers. Barely a ghost of a sound.  _If he doesn't hear it, it's a sign._

His voice is like velvet rubbed the wrong way. "Yeah, Stevie."

"I-"

He takes a deep breath.

"Do - I -"  _Fuck. Steven. Speak._

Bucky rolls over, and the sudden nearness of his face robs Steve of rational thought. He breathes out slowly, shakily, and tries again.

"Do you never - do you really never - even - think about? This? I mean." He swallows hard. "Us?"

For a moment there's nothing but silence, and he realizes Bucky's holding his breath.  

"I'm sorry," he says, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I-"

Bucky's hand settles onto his collarbone, grips the neck of his t-shirt. The bones of his knuckles rest in the hollow of Steve's throat. He stops talking.

"Stevie," he whispers. "Of course I do."

Steve goes utterly still, convinced he's misheard. His heartbeat is roaring like the ocean in his head and Bucky lets go of his shirt and touches his face so, so lightly, and he says it again. 

"Of course I do."

Steve just stares at him, his barely-visible outline in the dark, and the only thought he can formulate is  _what_ , and so that's what he says.

"What?"

Bucky sighs. He traces a fingertip over Steve's cheek, his jaw, the bridge of his nose, eyebrows, ears. Lips. Steve is not breathing. Steve is dead, probably, or asleep, or delirious with some kind of terrible plague, because there is just no way that this is happening. No way that Bucky Barnes is lying here in this bed, looking at him, _touching_ him like he loves him. 

He takes a trembling breath.

"I'm scared, Stevie," Bucky says, and for the second time in as many minutes, Steve says, "What?"

Bucky snorts a laugh and puts his hand on the back of Steve's neck, pulls him closer, until their foreheads are pressed together. "I said I'm scared," he repeats, and they're so close together that Steve can feel the brush of his lips as he speaks. He shivers, and he knows Bucky must feel it. 

"Why are you scared," he murmurs, barely moving his lips. Trying so hard not to break the spell.

"You're my copilot, Rogers. I can't - it's hard enough to lose -" He breaks off, and Steve hears something in his jaw click as he grits his teeth. 

He reaches out, tucks Bucky's hair behind his ear. "I told you before, Buck. I'm not gonna quit until you do. I'm with you 'til the end of the line."  

He's too close to see it, but he feels Bucky smile.

* * *

 The sirens jerk them out of a deep sleep. It's the first time they've ever heard them in their own quarters, and the sound sends Steve's heart rushing up into his throat. He throws an arm out and Bucky is there, already sitting up, raking his hands through his tousled hair. The flashing light illuminates him like a stop-motion film as he pushes up from the bed, turns to his locker, grabs his suit. He turns back to Steve.

"Stevie, get up."

Steve does, numbly, feeling like he's underwater. He can't possibly be moving fast enough and yet somehow now they're in their suits, they're in the corridor, and before he can quite get a handle on the situation they're standing in Fury's office. Fury is there next to Hill, Danvers at his other side, and there's a huge LED screen on the wall glowing white-blue. The door clicks shut behind them. The screen flares to life, flickering wildly as the picture resolves and settles.

"Shamsiel," Fury says shortly. Steve squints at the screen. All he can see is the ocean, a vast expanse of blue-green and whitecaps. He looks closer, trying, trying, and he feels Bucky's spine stiffen the instant before he sees it. 

"Is... is that-"

"The next kaiju." Danvers nods. "It's going to make landfall by tonight unless it's stopped."

They look at each other. Bucky's eyes are wide and frightened. 

"The Howler," Steve starts to say. 

"We can't-" Bucky says at the same time.

Hill holds up a hand. "I've explained the issue to them," she says tiredly, and it's obvious from the way she says it that it was a long and losing battle. "The Howler will function until it overheats, and then the core will melt down. We will extricate you from the hull when the kaiju is disposed of."

"Are there no other - is no one else ready?"

Fury pinches the bridge of his nose. "None of you are ready," he snaps. "But your jaeger is expendable, and the rest are not."

Rage slices hot and clean through Steve's heart. Bucky's fists snap shut. 

"That is a fucked-up way to think about something with a mind  _you_ created, sir," he says, and the  _sir_ is a sibilant hiss. Fury's one eyebrow arches dangerously, but he doesn't say anything. He just turns back to the screen. The camera is approaching Shamsiel, the white blur of it getting larger by the second, and Steve can see long slashing ropes of light on either side of its - head? Body? He shudders.

"The Howler has a long-range rifle, a knife, and a broadsword. They're all designed to work specially against whatever fucked-up force-field these things have. I know you know this."

Steve realizes he's nodding, sort of bobbleheading, really, and stops. 

"From what we can tell based on thermal imaging and long-range photography, its head is tucked up underneath the rest of its body, like a manta ray. The core is in there. Shoot it from a distance, get up underneath it real quickly, and use the knife. Nothing will have an effect until you breach the outside of the core, but the bullets will at least faze it, distract it."

Bucky looks faintly green, but he doesn't hesitate. 

"All right, Colonel. We're gonna tear it apart. But I want you to promise me something."

Fury's eyebrow reaches a terrifying pitch.

"When we get back - when the Howler's dead - we get the Soldier."

Steve's heart does something complicated and painful and fizzy, and he flicks his eyes to the ceiling to keep the tears from welling out.

Fury folds his arms. "Tall order, Barnes."

"Take it or leave it," he snaps, eyes blazing. "You're throwing away a good jaeger, and if we have to be the ones to do it we're owed."

Danvers lays a hand on Fury's arm before he can speak again. She levels her gaze at the two of them.

"You'll have maybe fifteen minutes before meltdown. Less if the tether breaks."

Her voice softens, as much as an iceberg can. "Rely on your training and your copilot." She stops just short of saying something she doesn't mean, something like  _You'll be fine_. 

The elevator is cold and loud, rattling around them as they climb the twenty-four stories into the air. The temporary docking platform was erected when the Howler went into the water; it's little more than a spit of metal where the entry plug is housed, poised above the jaeger's neck. There's barely enough room on the platform for both of them at once. The elevator is a simple cage, open on two sides, and Steve clutches the railing as they ascend. His fingers stick to the frozen metal and he flexes them, welcoming the sharp sting of tearing flesh. Bucky stands beside him, looking out at the ocean. 

The elevator lurches to a stop, swaying gently from side to side as they climb over the rail. Bucky turns back to look at Steve; his heart does that funny thing again and he can't find any words, so he reaches out and touches Bucky's shoulder. His hand slips away as Bucky folds himself down into the entry plug, and then it's his turn. The lid of the plug slides over them and Hill's voice crackles into his ear. "We're going to take you about a hundred miles up the coast," she says as the plug is shoved into the entry port. "Drop you directly in its path."

Neither of them speaks. He can hear the hiss of the open line, knows she's debating saying something further, but then the snow-sound stops and they are alone in the pod. 

"You ready, Stevie?"

He closes his eyes. 

"Yeah, Buck."

The world blossoms into life in front of them. 

"Well, if we're gonna die, it's a hell of a view to die to."

"We're not gonna die, Buck."

"Yeah, yeah."

The flight up the coast is short and clumsy, wind buffeting the jaeger as it dangles from its clamps. They don't talk much, but Steve can feel Bucky inventorying the Howler's weapons, reviewing their limited information about Shamsiel. Steve stares out of the jaeger's eyes at the horizon, waiting for the creature to come into view.

"Sixty seconds, boys," Hill says into their ear. "Don't lock your knees."

In the distance, a white shape, a flapping, crawling thing that seems to writhe forward across the sky. 

"Thirty seconds."

The great wide wings of the creature lash forward, flailing, raking across the water and the wind and pulling it toward them. 

"Ten seconds."

Shamsiel is no more than half a mile distant, poised above the ocean like a leech. 

"Five."

"Bucky," he says suddenly, desperately.

"Four."

Shamsiel's wings - tentacles - arms - whip forward, just missing the Howler's legs.

"Yeah, Steve."

"Three."

"If we live-"

"Stevie, we're gonna live-"

"Two."

"Buck, if we live, I-"

A glowing coil snakes out, wraps itself around their waist,  _pulls_.

"I want to-"

"One."

They smash into the ocean face-first.

"Fuck, I can't see-"

"Turn, turn over, we have to-"

"I'm trying-"

The jaeger's head breaks the surface and Shamsiel is there, the size of an aircraft carrier, close enough to touch. It spreads across the sky like poison. They look up into its heart and they can see it, pulsing, glowing beneath a set of eight tightly-curled legs. It looks at them, somehow, and an icy chill spreads through them.

They lurch up, grabbing the tentacles and wrenching them down, heaving their body upright. Water cascades out of every port as the Howler stabilizes itself on the ocean floor, its upper body free of the water, its head just inches below Shamsiel's maggoty underbelly. They reach up and seize another of the wings, the arms, and the thing wraps itself around their arm and sinks something into them that burns like knives and they scream. They pull away instinctively and the thing does not let go, pulling them back, and the bones of their arm grate dangerously in the socket, and then suddenly their other arm is unsheathing the knife. It crackles with something, some ozone-smelling firepower that sets the teeth on edge, and they slash it down and through the tentacle and it parts like butter. They fall into the sea, the arm still wrapped around theirs, melting into the plates of their arm. The pain becomes a dull burning. The knife slashes out, up, out, and the arms keep reaching, reaching, and the smug arachnid legs are folded safely around the heart of the beast just above them. 

"Rifle," he says, or thinks. 

The kaiju is too close. They lean, lean, lean until they are tilting, falling backward, and at the last moment before they crash back into the sea they fire one perfect shot into the monster's heart. 

They resurface and surge upward, unsheathing the broadsword as they rise, and the spiderlike legs are scrabbling frantically at the core, trying to make sure it is unharmed, and they seize one of the hateful wings and pull the soft white leech-body down onto the point of the sword. 

Shamsiel screams and it is a sound like nothing they have ever heard. The tentacle snaps out and wraps itself around their head, obscuring their vision, and they scrabble at it with both hands, dropping the broadsword in the terror of sudden blindness. Something tears in their back, the pain registering dimly. One hand goes halfheartedly back to grope, to swat away the pain, and then the tentacle tightens around the helmet and there is a grating, crunching sound like a thousand needles in the head and then there is a voice, a small voice, somewhere

_the tether is broken repeat the tether_

_melt        five_

_heart_

_core_

_tether repeat the te_

_"-ther is broken!_ " Hill is shrieking. "Do you copy, pilots, the tether is broken, you have five minutes before the jaeger is inoperable, kill that  _fucking thing now_ -"

The rifle is in their hands again but the kaiju is too close, the broadsword is gone, they fling the rifle down and the knife springs forward and they hold up their other hand to shield them, Shamsiel is gushing a black tarry liquid from a rent in its hide but the core, the hateful core gazes at them and still the arm tightens around their head, their vision flickering in and out, the pressure becoming unbearable, they lunge up blindly and their grasping hand finds the tentacle, pulls it, pulls them up hand over hand until their feet are no longer in the water, their fingertips graze the legs with a horrible skittering sound and Shamsiel screams and screams, tries to pull away, tries to sink more needles into them with its wings but the core is melting, the Howler's heart is melting and the pain blurs into a solid impenetrable wall and they reach up again, seize one of the spiderlegs, tear it away with an arterial spray of charcoal gore, the kaiju is trying to climb now, to ascend back into the sky, to escape, but the knife extends again and the ozone crackle lances from it into the kaiju, into the core the eye the heart, and Shamsiel's body contracts around the blade shrieking, scrabbling, trying to escape but they're inseparable now, the tentacles sunk too deeply into them, into their bones, and the monster can't pull away and they draw the pain inward, downward, crushing the monster to their burning heart, and then the ocean closes over them and there is only darkness, and pain, and the distant sound of a dying star.

* * *

 He cracks an eye open. The light hurts like a bullet. A form resolves itself against the brightness. 

"Rogers."

"Commander," he says. His voice grates out of him. "Did - did we-"

"Shamsiel is dead," she says simply. "So is the Howler."

He sits bolt upright and then yelps as a fresh stab of pain finds its way behind his eyes. He jams the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, hoping the pressure will quiet the pain. When he thinks he can get away with it, he opens his eyes. 

"Where's Bucky?"

Her mouth folds down at the corners. Something seizes in his chest and he tries not to look at it, tries not to give it a name. He asks again.

"Commander. Where-"

She sighs. "You need to stay here, Rogers. Your MRI was-"

"Commander, I swear to God-"

"Oh, for- he's in your quarters, Rogers, he's fine, he already - you need to - Rogers!"

He's already running. 

 

Bucky's sitting on his bed toying with a hair tie, his face a mask of worry, and his head snaps up so fast when Steve slams the door open that his neck cracks audibly. He stands up quickly, dropping the hair tie, but he doesn't move. He just stands there, looking at him, and then he says, "Stevie."

Steve crosses the room in three big steps and he doesn't even hesitate before he cups Bucky's face in his hands and kisses him.

Bucky makes a sound like a sigh and just  _folds_ into him, like a flower blossoming in reverse, like coming home, he puts his hand on the back of Steve's neck and pulls him flush against his body and they fit together like they're made for it. Steve's hands move, tentative at first, lighting and alighting like butterflies across the familiar space of Bucky's body, the same and yet not-the-same. He opens his mouth under Bucky's lips and feels his heartbeat jump, smiles at the thought, feels him curl his fingers into the front of Steve's shirt to pull him down onto the bed-

"Steve," he says breathlessly, pulling back just far enough to speak. Steve leans forward, hazy, wanting, and Bucky has to put a hand on his cheek to keep him still for a moment while he finds his head. "Steve."

A pang of fear steals its way into his heart as he sits back, and Bucky must see it in his face because he leans forward and kisses him again, firmly, in a sort of no-nonsense don't-be-stupid way that makes him want to cry, and then he says, "Stevie. Are you wearing a hospital gown?"

He looks down. 

"I am," he admits. Bucky's eyes are soft and warm. 

"They didn't even sign you out, did they?"

"No, I.. ran." 

Steve reaches out and places the tip of his finger on one of his dimples. 

"You couldn't wait."

"Couldn't," he agrees, stroking his jawline softly. Bucky reaches up to catch his hand and presses it to his lips.

"You have to go back to the infirmary, though, Stevie. You know that, right?"

He sighs. "Will you go with me?"

Bucky grins at him, that infuriating, lovely smirk, and stands, pulling him up off the bed. "'Til the end of the line."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i DUNNO, MAN, you get roped away from writing for like two months and then you go totally batshit and write a million very extra words. as always, my apologies for... being like this. comments and feedback are welcome and appreciated, and that's about all i've got. are you reading [lockout](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6811624/chapters/15553855)? you should be reading lockout. anyway, stay tuned.


	11. ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> self-indulgent little interlude before the plot takes a necessary but depressing turn. our boys are finally on the same page.  
> tl;dr: haha and then what ;)

"Tell me everything.”

Steve blushes and drops the half-eaten piece of toast he’s holding.

“Oh, um- I mean, I will, but- do you really- I mean, here?”

The mess hall hardly seems like the place, but-

“Oh my god, Rogers, not- tell me about the _kaiju_ , you fuckin’ idiot-”

Riley swings himself down onto the bench next to Sam, gnawing on a packet of fruit sludge.

“Babe, can you-?”

Sam sighs and takes the packet, rips it open neatly, and hands it back. Riley shoves the entire end of the tube into his mouth and reaches for the coffee. Steve slides it toward him.

“Why are you so pink?” Riley asks around the fruit paste. “Sam, why is he so pink?”

“He thought I was asking him to kiss and tell right here at the breakfast table-”

Riley spits the tube onto the table. “You _dog!_ Barnes?”

Steve puts his head down next to the flattened packet. He can feel both sets of eyes boring into him.

“You know it was,” Sam says, not even trying to be quiet. “Fuckin’ don’t see him for a week, all I know is they killed a kaiju _and_ their jaeger, I get _one_ fucking text that says ‘SAM WE KISSED’ and then radio silence, he sits down here in front of me and I say _tell me everything_ , because, you know, I want to hear about the fuckin’ _giant monster fight_ , and he thinks I’m asking-”

Steve is now gently banging his head on the table.

“-he thinks I’m asking about _them,_ which, please, I’m interested, but I have my pri _or_ ities-”

He reaches out a hand, still facedown, and pushes Sam’s coffee cup off the table. He feels a weight settle onto the bench next to him.

“Barnes!” Sam says delightedly. “We were just talking about you!”

“I can see that,” he says drily. “Steve, you’re very pink.”

“All of you can go fuck yourselves,” he enunciates into the table.

“Barnes, tell us about the kaiju,” Sam says. “Steve’s brain got scrambled.”

“By love,” Riley adds through a mouthful of what sounds like shredded wheat, or possibly gravel. Steve kicks him sharply in the shin.

“Ow, fuck!”

He lifts his head. Sam gives him a wounded look as he bends to rub his shin. He shrugs.

“You both deserved it.”

Bucky leans into him. “Let’s not keep them in suspense anymore, Stevie.”

He reaches out and takes Steve’s hand, lacing their fingers together.

“So,” he says. “Giant monster fight.”

* * *

 He’d fainted almost immediately after they’d gotten back to the infirmary.

He had a brain bleed; they put him into a coma to try and relieve the swelling while they cauterized the broken vessel and siphoned the blood carefully away. Three days later he’d woken up with a pounding, tearing headache and Bucky holding his hand.

He looked as bad as Steve felt, ragged, his eyes hollow and bruised. When he saw Steve’s eyes open he started sobbing, trying to wipe away tears with his sleeve without letting go of him. He pressed his ear to Steve’s chest, listening to his heartbeat, and cried silently into his hospital gown until Steve lifted a hand slowly, laboriously, and touched his face.

“Buck,” he rasped.

Bucky lifted his head. Steve gave him the wickedest grin he could summon.

“You’re not getting out of this that easy,” he said.

The debrief was another two days, closed in a room with command staff, frame by frame by frame of the fight with the kaiju. They had coffee brought in, sandwiches, soup. They watched it die again and again, flinching a little less each time. The frames before they lost consciousness were the worst, a close-up view of the mangled kaiju clasped against them, scrabbling against their chest as its tarry blood spewed out. There was a horrible bright intelligence about it, a light that died even as they watched, and it made Steve woozy with fear and doubt. Two days in that room, one five-minute battle strung apart into milliseconds, his head bandaged and throbbing where they’d punched a hole in his skull. Bucky was never out of reach for more than a minute.

As Hill unlocked the door to let them out, she glanced at their clasped hands.

“Pilots,” she said, stepping in front of them. Steve lifted his head to meet her eyes, a silent challenge. She sighed.

“Be careful.”

Her face was almost sad.

“It’s… it’s a hard enough job as it is.”

* * *

 “Now then,” Bucky says, grinning wolfishly. “Who wants to hear about _after_ the giant monster fight?”

“Oh my god,” Steve mutters into his hands.

“You should have seen it, Wilson.”

“Oh, my _god_.”

“They drilled a hole right in the back of his head.”

“Oh my god.” Somewhat relieved.

“And then we made out.”

“ _All_ right,” he says, slapping his hands on the table and pushing himself up to standing. “I think it’s time to go see Wanda.”

Bucky’s still chuckling as they step into the elevator. “You’re so shy.”

“Well-!” He folds his arms indignantly. “I don’t - I mean - it’s hardly the time-”

Bucky leans into him, presses him into the wall, one leg on either side of his, and kisses him. Steve holds onto the thread of his argument for a brief second before he’s distracted by lips and dark hair and warm skin, and then the elevator makes the familiar low wail that means it’s almost to Mechanics. Bucky pulls back a fraction of an inch, nuzzles into the crook of his neck to press a kiss under his jaw, and then he whispers, “ _God,_ I love you.”

Steve freezes, mouth open. His heart does something swoopy and robs him of any breath, any speaking ability, and then the door dings open and Bucky steps away from him, the corner of his mouth tipped up in that sly half-smile, and pulls him by the hand out onto the jaeger floor.

Wanda bounds over to them, looking almost deliriously happy. She has a smudge of grease on one cheek.

“You live!”

She pulls them both into a surprisingly strong hug.

“We live,” he agrees, patting her back. “Thanks to the Howler.”

Her smile dims, and she nods. “She did well.”

Bucky squeezes her shoulder. “You built her, kid.”

She nods, her mouth twisting for a moment, and then she gives a brisk full-body shake.

“Now. Come with me."

She darts away, leaving them to trot after her. Steve is trying to focus, he really is, but he keeps staring at the back of Bucky’s head. _Did he really-_

He trips over a gigantic lug wrench. “Fuck!”

Bucky turns back to him, eyes worried, and hauls him up off the ground.

“Can ya be a little careful, Stevie? There’s a hole in your skull, y’know.”

“No, they filled it in,” he says distractedly, trying to look nonchalant as he limps forward.  _Did he really?_

They catch up to Wanda at the foot of the Soldier. As Steve looks up at it, the anxiety dissolves, the knots in his stomach loosen.

 _It’s perfect_.

Wanda makes a beckoning gesture at them. They clip into tethers, follow her up to the platform at the Soldier’s chest. She hops onto a catwalk barely the width of her shoes and presses her palms flat against the metal.

“Isn’t she lovely?”

“Do you need to be so-” Bucky waves his hand. “Perched? I don’t think I can catch you from here.”

She laughs. “If anyone needs catching it will be you, Barnes.”

They follow her across the catwalk, shuffling and praying, and then up to the entry platform.

“She can run one hour without the tether,” she says, lifting a forefinger. “With the tether, unlimited.”

“Holy shit,” Bucky mutters.

“Yes. She has the rifle, the knife, the broadsword like Howler. She has also a pistol and a shield.”

“Where-”

“Under the plates,” she answers, knowing already what he’s asking. “That is why she is so large.”

Steve whistles.

“Beautiful.”

Wanda nods.

“She will kill many monsters.”

Steve looks at her. She’s gazing at the jaeger, her face shuttered and blank.

“Why don’t you pilot, Wanda?”

A chill passes through him as her eyes fall on his.

“There is enough inside my mind,” she says simply. “I do not want a weapon inside also.”

Before he can reply she vaults up and over the railing of the platform and drops out of sight. The tether hisses as it whips past them.

“Poor kid,” Bucky says. He starts to fiddle with his own tether, but Steve puts a hand on his forearm.

“Buck-”

Bucky turns to him, lips parting, and Steve has a very small, very quick panic attack, and then before he can work himself up any further he inhales sharply and breathes out too fast and then he says, “I love you, too.”

Bucky drops the tether, the clip dangling loosely at his side. He doesn’t move, so Steve doesn’t move, and they stand there for a moment while Steve tries to figure out if maybe he misheard him in the elevator.

The smile breaks across Bucky's face like sunrise.

"C'mon," he says. "I have an idea."

* * *

 "Fury is gonna kill us," he pants as they trot out the main doors of the Shatterdome.

"You have a hole in your brain. We're allowed to take a personal day."

"Yeah, but - to go to the - where are we going?"

"We don't know, Rogers. That's the fun. Enjoy the unknown. Try not to breathe so hard, okay? You're freakin' me out."

"You're the one who made me run."

"Oh, hush."

Bucky tows him by the hand onto a little red streetcar. They stand on the back platform, Bucky leaning against the railing, Steve leaning against him. He can feel the point of Bucky's chin resting on his shoulder, and it moves as he speaks.

"This is nice," he says. "Maybe we should just ride the rails all day, hm?"

Steve closes his eyes and tilts his head back. Bucky kisses his shoulder. The little trolley rattles them into the city, winding through the narrow streets. The city is always in stages of reconstruction, even without a recent kaiju attack, and today is no different. Bucky yanks him abruptly off the trolley when he sees a sign for a coffee shop.

“Oh my god,” he moans as they walk through the door. “I haven’t smelled real coffee in three years.”

“You sound like Barton,” Steve remarks.

“I feel like Barton,” he answers. “That’s how bad it is.”

Steve whistles.

“We’d better get you caffeinated, then.”

Bucky orders something complicated. Steve orders coffee with milk. Bucky rolls his eyes.

“It’s like you don’t even mind the instant stuff.”

“I don’t,” Steve admits. “It’s not great, but it’s coffee.”

“Now who sounds like Clint?”

Bucky sits down at a tiny table and Steve sits across from him, and they don’t say anything for a bit. The girl brings their cups over. Bucky’s is heaped with whipped cream, cocoa powder, and some things that look dangerously like sprinkles. Steve’s has a nice little leaf-shape etched in foam.

“See,” he says. “Can’t get that in the mess.”

Bucky rolls his eyes again, but the corner of his mouth lifts. He takes a sip of his own drink, then puts it down and slides it toward Steve.

“Live a little, Rogers.”

He puts it to his lips, watching Bucky watching him, and takes a drink.

“Ah, no. It’s good.”

He sets it down with a sigh.

“I should have known.”

Bucky’s face is almost aggressively fond as he reaches out and rubs his thumb across Steve’s nose.

“The dangers of fancy drinks,” he says gently. “Cocoa powder.”

Steve literally feels himself lean into it, like a flower turning to the sun, the half-second contact making him yearn for more. He reaches out and takes Bucky’s hand before he can curve it back around the cup. Bucky smiles and laces their fingers together, stroking the back of Steve’s hand with his thumb. Steve wants to purr like a cat, but instead he picks up his coffee with his non-held hand.

“Disappointing after the sprinkles,” he says after tasting it. “Still so much better than instant, though. Ugh. I thought I was okay with it. I was lying to myself.”

“You can’t describe anything instant as ‘velvety’. That’s all I’m saying.”

The latte is definitely velvety, the rich dark flavor of it intoxicating after three years of weak Shatterdome coffee. Steve sighs appreciatively and buries his face in the cup again. They finish their drinks in relative silence, never letting go of each other’s hands.

Bucky stands and stretches before carrying their cups over to the little dish cart in the back of the shop. He goes back to the counter and speaks to the barista, fishing a few crumpled dollars out of his pocket. Steve stands to meet him as he comes back to the table.

“To go,” Bucky answers, seeing the question on his face. “We’re not going back until we’ve had our fill of every outside substance we want.”

They get their cups to go and walk back out into the cold, the winter sun bright and pale on their faces. Bucky looks around furtively before pulling him into the alleyway next to the shop.

 _C’mon_ , he mouths, nodding his head toward the back of the building. Steve follows him, trying to figure out what they’re doing, and then Bucky hands him his coffee and leaps into the air.

He catches the bottom of the fire-escape ladder neatly, pumping his feet to bring it down with a shriek and a shower of rust flakes.

“After you,” he says, taking his cup from Steve and kissing him quickly behind the ear. Steve flushes and starts climbing.

The fire escape leads into a maze of scaffolding. The back of the building is being painted, or restored, or something, and there are platforms all the way up to the top. Bucky climbs onto one carefully, hops to another, and Steve follows. They make their way to the very top of the scaffolding in fits and starts, putting down cups and handing them to each other, shimmying under spars of wood and metal piping, until finally they’re standing above the entire city.

Bucky sits on the edge of the scaffolding and Steve folds himself down next to him, leaving a few inches between them, shy for some reason. They can see all the way back to the Shatterdome from here, the ocean in the distance. The air is cold and clear and the tops of the buildings around them are beautiful, somehow.

“This is more how I imagined it,” Bucky says after a moment.

The ocean is a sheet of gold meeting the horizon.

“Imagined what,” says Steve, looking at him out of the corner of his eye.

Bucky’s gaze flickers but stays on the ocean as he says, “Telling you. That I love you.”

Steve feels that same rushing, swooping sensation in his stomach, up his spine, into his head where it bursts like fireworks.

“I did hear you right,” he marvels. “I thought maybe-“

“No, you did. I couldn’t - it just sort of slipped out. Not that I didn’t mean it,” he says hastily, turning to face Steve. “Just that I - had wanted to - for it to be-“

“It was perfect,” Steve says gently, his heart beating hard. Their eyes meet, Bucky’s long lashes flickering as he swallows.

“Well,” he says. “That’s good, then. But still-“

He takes a deep breath, his gaze steady on Steve. “I love you.”

“I love you,” Steve says, voice catching a little. “So much. I-“

He looks back out at the ocean, blinking away the blurriness in his eyes.

“Three _years_ ,” he says. “I never thought.”

“I know,” says Bucky, his voice soft and sad. “I’m sorry.”

Steve laughs at that. “You don’t have to be - don’t be stupid, Buck. You don’t have to apologize for not liking me before.”

“I did, though, Stevie.”

His voice gets even quieter.

“I did."

"Buck," he says uncertainly. "I didn't know."

"I know."

Bucky looks up at the sky, blinking hard.

"That’s why I’m sorry. For being scared.”

He makes an abortive gesture, something small and stifled.

“We could have had so much time-“

"Hey." He shifts so he’s on his knees, facing Bucky, and cups his face with both hands. “We have time now,” he says softly.

Bucky’s eyes go a little misty as the corner of his mouth twitches up into that smirk that Steve is starting to think is reserved for him. He puts one hand on Steve’s thigh, the other on the back of his neck, and pulls him into a kiss. They sit up there until their lips are numb from kissing and the cold, never letting go of each other. The sun is starting to go down when Steve finally pulls away.

“So,” he says, grinning. “The whole time?”

Bucky laughs ruefully.

“Oh, yeah. From day one. When we fought.”

“Really.”

He bites his lip and smiles.

“When I had you pinned?”

He shakes his head, almost laughing at himself.

“I looked down at you, and it was like, _oh shit_. I was… I was _maybe_ two seconds from kissing you.”

Steve is just watching him, amazed. He's just spent two hours kissing this boy senseless and still the idea that Bucky had wanted to kiss him,  _ever_ , makes his heart stutter and squeeze.

“I thought you hated me.”

“I know you did.”

“And when I told you-“

“I almost died,” Bucky says. “I almost had an aneurysm. I was so _mad_ at you-“

“What? Why?”

“Because until then I could pretend it was just a crush, just some dumb one-sided thing that would go away, but then I had to know that you-“

He breaks off, shaking his head again.

“You almost drove me crazy.”

Steve makes an indignant sound.

“You could have-“

“I know,” he says, “I know. I just kept hoping it would be - not what it was. I kept hoping I’d wake up and not want you.”

“Because of… because of the gay thing?”

Bucky snorts a laugh.

“No, Stevie. Jesus Christ. Because I don’t do losing people very well.'

His face goes somber as he meets Steve's eyes.

"It scared me, how much I - I didn’t even _have_ you, and I was-“

“Oh, Buck,” Steve says softly, taking his hand. Bucky drops his gaze to their linked hands.

“I almost told you so many times,” he murmurs. “That night when you went to the bar-“

“The night you held my hand,” Steve says. Bucky nods.

“It was all I could do not to hit that guy,” he says. “And then you told me you’d never - like it was a bad thing - and I just couldn’t not touch you. I couldn't tell you, but I could- I had to at least do that.”

Steve is almost dizzy with it, the utter heady shock of it. Bucky had loved him all along.

“Holding your hand was the best part of the night,” he admits. “No contest.”

“Your fuckin’ blue mouth,” Bucky says, his eyes soft. “Should have kissed you.”

Steve says, “Probably, yeah,” and Bucky leans in and kisses him, and Steve can feel him smiling the whole time.

They go to a noodle place for dinner, holding their frozen faces above the steaming bowls to get warm. There is some sake, and then some more, and then the trolley back to the Shatterdome, Bucky wrapped in his arms as they look out at the city.

They make it inside without anyone noticing them. The Shatterdome at night is empty and still; their footsteps echo as they walk through Mechanics. Then the elevator, lips meeting as soon as the doors close. Then the hallway, and then their room, their teeth clacking together with the urgency of the kiss, the hunger, the heat. They sprawl on his bed, peeling off each other’s clothes layer by layer. Steve keeps breaking away just to look at him, the smooth curving planes of his face, his body. He’s staring with intense concentration at the place where Bucky’s collarbone flares out into his shoulder when he has a thought.

“Hey,” he says. “Why did you push me so hard that day? When I told you I had feelings for you? You could have left it alone and you’d have never known the difference.”

Bucky sighs, turning his head to kiss Steve’s wrist.

“Because I thought it was me,” he says quietly. “I thought I was the reason our rate was so low. I was so mad at myself, and I was so sure you would notice, and I just sort of… freaked out, I guess. I thought maybe if I made you think it was you, I could buy myself some time to get it together, you know? But I didn’t know… I didn’t know.”

Steve nods, bending his elbow and lowering himself down to lie along Bucky’s side, draping one leg over his. He returns his attention to Bucky’s collarbone, which is equally fascinating from this angle, and runs his fingers over it. Bucky shivers and tightens his arm around him. Steve keeps trailing his fingers across his skin as he speaks.

“Can I ask you something?”

Bucky makes a sound of assent, eyes drifting shut as Steve continues to pet him.

“That night, after everything. Did- were you-“

Now that he’s started the question he’s not sure where to go. 

“I thought I heard you crying,” he says finally. “But you… weren’t?”

Bucky opens one eye, dark blue and dangerous.

“Is that a question?”

Steve can see the corner of his mouth lifting ever so slightly. _Jerk._

“No,” he says. “Well, kind of. Did- was it-“

The smirk widens.

“Was it because of me?”

“Fuck, Rogers." He laughs, the sound becoming a low growl as he inhales. "Of course it was. ‘Re you kidding me? What have we been talking about all day?”

Steve flushes with pleasure, heat curling in his belly. Bucky’s heart beats faster under his hand.

“What did you think about?”

His voice is almost a whisper. Bucky’s, when he answers, is just as quiet.

“You coming back from the greenhouse,” he says, eyes closing again. “Sitting down next to me on my bed.”

Steve’s hand slips lower, until it’s just skirting the edge of Bucky’s boxer briefs.

“You had dirt on your face,” he says, his voice hitching slightly, throat working. “I wiped it off.”

Steve palms him through the fabric, luxuriating in the little noise that escapes him, the way he can't quite catch his breath.

“But then instead of - walking away - you grab my hand as I’m still touching your face and you pull it- down-“

Steve’s rolling his hand now, pressure from the heel to the fingertips over and over, slow and even, watching Bucky's face as he struggles to keep talking. The words stutter out, soft and urgent on a shaky exhale. “You’re hard and you say my name and then you kiss me, and-“

Steve bites his neck at the same moment he slips his hand under his waistband, and the way Bucky’s fingers dig into his back makes him shiver. He starts to stroke him slow and gentle, the softness of the skin under his fingers seeming impossible. Bucky whimpers, digging his heels into the mattress, pressing his head back into the pillow, and Steve bites him again and murmurs, “Is this what happens next?”

"Yes," he sighs, hips rolling to meet Steve's hand. “Yes- you push me down onto the bed, you start undressing me, and I finally- I finally unfreeze and I-“

His hand clutches at the sheet and then flutters to Steve’s cock, painfully hard under his own underwear. He hisses through his teeth as Bucky touches him. Bucky is breathing hard, face flushed, and he turns and kisses Steve urgently, and they breathe against each other’s mouths and move together.

“I closed my eyes and pretended it was you,” he pants. “You touching me, just like this, and I thought about what you’d look like, how you’d say my name- oh, fuck, Stevie, I’m-“

He gasps and shudders hard and Steve lifts his head just in time to look at him, watch the line of his throat go taut as he throws his head back and comes, little breathy cries escaping his clenched teeth as he rocks through it, and his hand tightens around Steve's cock and Steve says _fuck, fuck_ , his breath hot against Bucky’s jaw and Bucky says _yeah, baby, I know, I know_ and kisses him hard and when his tongue hits Bucky’s he comes, hips jerking wildly against his hand, desperate whining growls coming from deep in his chest, muffled against Bucky's skin as he says his name again and again and again. 

They lie there panting, sticky, and they just keep looking at each other and smiling like idiots, and finally Bucky says, “Better than I imagined.”

Steve laughs and pulls him closer, pressing himself against him like he can fuse them into one being. "Worth the wait."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beep boop bop. i'm shirking my nano duties but this felt important and i am anxious to get back to the angst where i, as a horrible monster-person, really thrive. sorry it has been so long since the last chapter! i feel like i say this a lot but: my work schedule has finally actually been established, so now i am going to be able to post more regularly. which means it will only be the lack of motivation, and not also time constraints, that are preventing me from doing so. thank you for still being here, if you're still here, and of course comments etc are always welcome, thank you, love you, xoxo jaeger girl


	12. eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> maybe just listen to "tomorrow's money" by my chemical romance but uh, it's time for act 2

The intercom makes the shrill _ree-ree-ree_ sound they've gotten used to and Sam's voice fills the room.

"Are you decent?"

Steve groans and flings his water bottle at the door. There's a brief pause before Sam slams the door open, pointedly not noticing that they’re tangled up in each other and barely clothed under the thin blanket.

“You’re a disgrace to the whole program,” he says, snapping on the light. “Look at you. Rogers, your hair.”

Steve lifts his head slightly, brushing Bucky’s hair away from his mouth. “Wha.”

"I think something's going down," Sam says, walking in and sitting on Steve's empty bed.

"What do you mean?"

He tries to sit up without disturbing Bucky. There is a small rumbling sound from under the covers.

"Stevie. Wha's happening."

"It's okay, Buck. Go back to sleep."

Bucky rolls sideways, arm flopping over the side of the bed, and starts snoring. Steve swings his legs out of bed and faces Sam.

"Fury and Danvers have been in his office since last night," he says. "Haven't left once."

"Another kaiju?"

"Has to be."

"That seems... soon. Doesn't it?"

"Shamsiel was six months ago, right?"

"Just about."

"Then it's definitely sooner than they expected. Riley's been talking to the lab techs, the ones who are tracking them, and he said they weren't looking at another emergence until end of the year at the soonest."

"Maybe it's something else?"

"What else?"

Steve nods. "Yeah. When do you think they'll tell us?"

"Whenever they figure out how to kill it, I guess. You think they'll need more than one of us this time?"

"We needed it last time."

Sam laughs. "Fair enough. I won't lie, I'm kind of excited."

Steve's feeling it too now, adrenaline beginning to crackle up his spine. He nudges Bucky gently.

"Mm."

"Buck, there's gonna be another kaiju," he says. "We should get up."

Bucky makes a noncommittal sound. There's a moment of silence and then he bolts upright.

"What? Now?"

He struggles up out of the bed, hair drooping crazily over his face. "When? How-"

"Meet us in the cafeteria," Sam says, grinning as he watches Bucky pat his way absently across the blanket. Steve takes the hair tie off his own wrist and puts it in the path of his searching hand. Bucky grunts a thank-you and starts toward the closet, corralling his hair as he goes.

"See you in ten."

He steps up behind Bucky as he's pulling on his track pants, wrapping his arms around him and pressing his face into the back of his shirt. He's warm from sleep and he smells good, and Steve just stands there and breathes for a second before he loosens his grip enough that Bucky can turn around.

"Hey," he says, pressing his forehead to Steve's.

"Hey," Steve says. They stay like that for a moment and then Bucky pulls him closer, hugs him so tight the breath is forced out of him, burying his face in Steve's neck.

"Love you," he says, lips against skin, and Steve feels it as much as hears it. He closes his eyes, Bucky's heartbeat thudding through him.

"Love you," he says back, his mouth to Bucky's ear. They stand there holding each other, clinging together like they're drowning, and Steve feels a sharp sudden panic that he can't explain. His breath catches and he pulls away just enough to kiss Bucky hard, fiercely, and unbidden the thought comes into his head: _Like it's the last time._

The cafeteria is almost empty. A few mechanics are huddled at a table near the largest window, and one of the older lab techs is pacing back and forth as she talks on the phone, but otherwise it's just them.

"Where's Sharon?" Steve asks as they sit down. Clint shoves the coffeepot toward them and gestures with a Danish.

"Gym," he said. "She wasn't gonna miss leg day just because we might all die."

Unease flickers in the back of Steve's mind again and he banishes it, willing himself to relax. He starts peeling the wrapper off of a mini-muffin and watches Riley execute a pretty solid drum solo on the table.

"I'm so stoked," he says, flipping the sporks over and stabbing them into his eggs.

Sam shakes his head, smiling fondly, and reaches for the coffee. His eyes flick up and Steve follows his gaze, turning to see Sharon jogging into the cafeteria, still-damp hair dripping. She drops down onto the bench in a shower of jasmine-scented droplets and takes the Danish out of Clint's hand.

"Hey!"

"Eat it or lose it, Barton," she says around a mouthful. "The cherry ones are the only ones I like. Hi, guys."

"Hi, Shar," Bucky says, taking a sip of coffee. "You excited?"

"Actually, yeah," she says, then puts the Danish between her teeth so she can wring out her hair onto the floor behind her, ignoring Clint's yelp of dismay. "I really think we're ready, you know? There's only so many times you can spar before you gotta get out there. But-"

She looks at Steve, something in her gaze he can't identify. He looks down at the table.

"You guys are the only ones who have been up close with one," she says. "How are you feeling?"

Bucky shrugs.

"We did okay on the first one," he says. "And we'll have you guys, and a jaeger that isn't on the verge of death, so... feeling pretty good, honestly. Ready to get out of the Dome for a bit, at the very least."

Steve swallows the bite of muffin he's been chewing and nods.

"Steve?" Sharon presses. "You good? You look peaky."

Before he can answer, the sirens go off. He looks up and there's Hill, standing in the doorway, waiting for them to follow her.

* * *

Captain Danvers is drumming her fingers on her desk, watching Fury pace back and forth in front of the huge frozen image. The kaiju is so much worse, somehow, than any that he's seen before. It looks -

"It looks like a fuckin' jaeger," Clint breathes. "What the fuck-"

Fury clears his throat.

"Sorry, sir, sorry, what the- um-"

"Bardiel," Danvers says, pressing a button on her keyboard. The video starts moving. The kaiju strides forward, waves foaming away from its legs. Clint is right: it looks like a jaeger. It's shaped like a human, mostly, all of its joints pulled long and pointed, shoulders and elbows and knees jutting up and out and away from it, exposed knobs of what might be bone glistening at the apexes of it all. Its eyes are set back under a pair of long misshapen horns that cast twisted shadows across its face, rippling as it opens its jaws impossibly wide and screams.

"Is it armored?" Sharon asks quietly. "That looks like-"

"It is metal, yes," Fury answers. "Or at least something that reads like metal to our sensors."

Bucky's face is doing something strange. His eyes flick down and to the right and Steve knows he's remembering something, somehow, and he knocks the back of his hand into Bucky's. Their eyes meet and he raises his eyebrows slightly. _What is it?_  Bucky grimaces, a movement so small it almost doesn't happen, and then he looks back at Fury.

"Sir," he says. "Is-"

He runs a hand through his hair, trying to pin down the thought.

"Was that a jaeger?"

Danvers' hand stills on the desk. Fury stops pacing, his eye boring a hole into Bucky.

"Sir, we can't fight it without-"

" _Yes,_  Barnes," he hisses. "It was a jaeger. It was the Marvel. When Phaethon took us down we were too far out to sea and it sank past where we could recover it. We left it on the bottom of the ocean."

"So-"

"So this kaiju has- has _infested_ it somehow," Danvers spits. "It's wearing it like a shell, but you can see-"

She paused the image again and walked toward the wall, touching one of the long disjointed appendages. "It's pulling it out of shape. It's still growing, we think."

"How is that possible?" Sharon whispers, looking sick. "How did it get inside?"

"We don't know," she answers. "But it gives us an advantage. We built the Marvel. We know how it works, where its weak points are. It's been corroding underwater for years and that thing inside it is separating all the panels. We'll need all of you, but it should be fairly simple to bring it down."

Steve looks around the room, then back at the kaiju, now standing motionless in the water. Tarry black liquid seeps from the rents in its armor. The sea around it is electric blue. He feels sick and cold.

"Tell us," he says. 

* * *

The jaegers have comm links to each other, so they can talk to the other pilots without interfering with the drift. The machines sway gently as they're transported, the planes flying in a tight formation high above the clouds. Steve is listening to the others talk, coasting along in the drift, trying to soothe his jangled nerves, when he feels Bucky tense.

_What is it?_

_Look._

They look out of the jaeger's eyes and see a figure on the horizon. Its thin arms are too long, hands hanging almost to its knees, and it casts a long shadow across the water. It radiates malevolence.

"Y'all see that?"

"Yeah, Sam," Steve answers.

The unease envelops them, crackling through the drift and magnifying as they draw closer to the kaiju. Something about it is like radio interference, clouding everything, distorting and blurring their mind. The drift is trying to destabilize, separate, and the edges between them shimmer in and out of existence.

_steve this feels bad, i feel bad_

_i know i do too_

_why does it feel like this why am i so afraid_

_i don’t know i_

_im losing my grip come back_

_come back_

_they're standing in the bar, watching across the room as a dark-haired man presses steve into a wall, presses his tongue into steve’s mouth, and a hollow aching emptiness opens inside them, one that roils with fear and anger and sadness and longing_

_i wanted you so badly_

_we were so stupid_

_looking up from the heart of the howler at bucky’s upside-down face peering over the edge of its hand, the sun a bright halo behind him_

_should have told you every day_

The fear surrounds them, wedges cold fingers between them, pulls and tears at them and they keep trying to hold onto each other, sink into a memory and stay there, stay _together_ but everything keeps flickering past, moving too quickly, the stream of memory slipping ceaselessly around them and they can't stay put, can't find purchase as they tumble across the surface of their mind--

_becca's scrunched-up face as she studies the speedbag and looks back over her shoulder, checking they're still watching_

The clamps open and they fall and they close their eyes--

_hiding under the desk, fingers laced over the back of the neck, forehead pressed to the floor, sirens wailing_

They crash into the shallow water a mile from the kaiju, standing and drawing their sword in one fluid motion. The Soldier moves better than the Howler. They reach behind them and disengage the tether. Behind them the other jaegers do the same, unsheathing weapons and stabilizing themselves against the seafloor. They have one hour.

_in the greenhouse, crying, fingers dug into the earth, heart aching as it never has before and overlaid is the sorrow and the shame of having caused such pain and again the longing, the terrible howling loneliness_

The kaiju's head snaps up. Its huge mouth hangs open obscenely as it turns toward them, scenting them. Suddenly they are terrified that it will speak to them, comm directly into the pilot pod and say something, its voice metallic and heavy with rot. A shudder runs through them. 

_wish i could hold you_

The other jaegers range around them, readying themselves for attack.

_soon don't worry_

"Everyone ready?" 

_soon_

"Now," Sharon says, and the Spider rolls its shoulders and charges forward. Memory after memory slams into them like bullets and none of them stick and they don't know what else to do and so they start running. The kaiju watches them approach, not moving, and it feels like a trap but they don't realize why until they are almost upon it and it stands up.

Bardiel unfolds itself up out of the water, many-jointed legs clicking and locking into place, bloodstained water cascading from every rent in its armor, and it is at least twice the size of every jaeger now standing before it.

"Holy mother of God," Sharon says from somewhere inside their brain.

It opens its mouth and screams.

"Everyone _move_ ," Sam snarls, and the Falcon lunges past them.

Bardiel's arm shoots out from its side, impossibly fast, impossibly _long,_ and seizes the Falcon by the throat. Steve cries out and the Soldier stumbles forward, catches itself, swings the sword and buries it in the side of the monster's forearm. It screams again, the sound rattling their bones, and flings the Falcon aside like a rag doll, turning to face them. They are at eye level with its heart, where the pilots would be seated if they were inside, where the core is. The Soldier feels the jaegerness of it, wants to communicate, wants to recognize it as one of its own, but they push it down and draw their pistol and start firing directly into the heart of the machine. One hand comes up to block the chest, the pulses of energy searing bright melting holes into it, and the other grabs them by the wrist.

As soon as it touches them Steve can feel it. The bridge trembles and fuzzes, the drift destabilizes completely. They lose their grip on each other. They are two separate people again - one mind - two separate people plugged into a machine - one person - and as the drift flickers and pulls them in and out and back in Steve's mind starts to fray.

"Buck-" he says out loud, desperately, unable to use the bridge, "-can you still-"

"No," Bucky says back. "I can still feel it- we're still connected- but it's not enough-"

Bardiel's hand still tightens on their wrist and the plates begin to crack and warp, the pain mirroring in their bones, and they scream and scream and the kaiju's blood seeps inside the wounds and then-

_NO_

The sound comes from all around them, from within them, the jaeger itself crying out in fear and outrage as

_NO no no_

"It's in the arm, Sam, it's their arm-"

_no stop STOP_

"What do you want me to-"

_GET OUT_

"You have to stop it before-"

_please no_

the tiny crawling things that came out of Bardiel, that _are_ Bardiel, some kind of fucked-up nanotech that Howard Stark would die to study, they're swarming up the Soldier's arm toward its brain

"I can’t, I can’t, it will hurt them too much-"

_please_

"Just _do it_ , Sharon, we're not close enough-"

and they can feel them spilling into the jaeger's mind, contaminating them, _infecting_ them, and Steve knows that if Bardiel makes it into the core they will both die, if not their bodies then certainly their minds, their _self_

and then there is a grinding, tearing, _ripping_ feeling and the loud shriek of metal and a glaring brightness and a white-hot explosion of pain and they both scream even as the wind rushes into the core, as the sun spears into their eyes and the screen that displays the Soldier's visuals goes black, and Steve rolls his eyes toward the sound and the pain in time to see the Spider flinging their mangled arm into the ocean.

Immediately the drift solidifies, enveloping them in each other, and the relief is tempered only by the blinding pain in their left arm.

_i love you_

"Steve! Bucky! Can you hear us?"

"Yes," Steve says hoarsely. His mouth tastes like blood.

"Did we get it all?"

"It's gone," Bucky says.

"Thank god-"

"Where is-"

Bardiel slams into them, knocking them off balance, the weight of their remaining arm dragging them sideways, and the Soldier staggers as they wheel around to face it. The sound of its breathing is insane and monstrous and wrong, a slithering clicking noise that climbs the walls of their brain. Their left side is on fire with agony, the pain somehow intensifying the drift as they try not to buckle under it. The sword, impossibly, is still in their hand, and they hold it out as they settle their feet firmly on the ocean floor.

Movement is awkward at first as they adjust to the off-kilter weight of their body, and they lope dizzily around Bardiel as it looks at the Spider. They can feel its anger, its hatred. It’s been deprived of prey.

The Spider’s move is to use its many arms to catch, pin, crush a kaiju. It’s a close-range jaeger, and as Bardiel swings its head back and forth and bellows they realize it is useless. When Bardiel makes contact with the jaeger it will do what it did to them, crawl into it, infest it. It can only deflect the kaiju; it cannot be the one to strike the killing blow.

The Falcon looks at them and they know what it wants to do; they swing the sword at the same moment it fires the energy cannon, knocking Bardiel forward and sideways past the Spider’s waiting arms. The Spider slams one giant fist into its head and pulls away quickly; the monster stumbles and raises one misshapen hand to paw at its cracked skull. The blue-black fluid inside it sheets down its face and it shakes its head, droplets arcing off its horns. It drops to one knee, then pushes itself upright, arms grasping for purchase, and one of its long-fingered hands finds the Soldier's cracked-open chest panel and closes on it and _pulls_.

They jerk back, bringing the sword up even as they fight to stay on their feet; the kaiju shifts its weight and scrabbles against them for purchase and then its giant hand smashes into the cockpit, knocking them backward, pulling them away from Bardiel even as its fingers rake across the floor and it grabs for whatever it can to hold itself up and then it closes its hand around something and the something is Bucky’s chair and then the world shatters into pain like he has never known.  

_no no no no NO STEVE_

The bridge rips apart.

The bridge fractures into a thousand tiny knife-edged pieces that lodge in his mind, his mind that is suddenly alone and torn open and missing half of itself. The hand withdraws and he is alone and the feeling of separation, of having something physically ripped out of him, rolls over him in waves and waves and he cannot breathe. The jaeger stumbles, goes down hard on its knees, the cockpit just barely above the waterline, and he cannot move. The ocean laps into the wreckage of his mind and he closes his eyes, waits for the jaeger to fall, for the water to flood his lungs. _Hang on, Buck. Be right there_.

"Rogers, can you hear me, fucking acknowledge-"

"His vitals are still reading, he's in there-"

"Wait, look at the Falcon, what's happening-"

Steve opens his eyes. He can't unplug himself, can't move in the chair, and he thinks his left arm might be paralyzed. He tries to look out of the hole in the Soldier's chest. He can hear the kaiju shrieking, the ring of metal on metal and the _zip-zip-zip_ of the energy cannon, and he can hear Commander Hill and Fury talking, crackling out of the speaker above him.

"What's happening?"

"Rogers, thank god-"

"Is Sam-"

"Rogers, we're going to override the Soldier, get ready-"

"What-"

Something flickers in his head like lightning and the jaeger lurches to its feet. The fractured screen flickers back to life.

Bardiel is holding the Falcon's head between its hands, jaws open, ropy black-and-blue saliva dripping from what might be teeth, and the Falcon is not moving. The gleaming white body is marbled with black threads, twisting and branching and as Steve watches the threads tighten, the metal crumples and splits beneath them, and the tendrils begin to sink beneath the surface of the jaeger.

"Sam!" he yells. "Sam, can you hear me?"

"...Steve..."

The sound is faint and tinny but it's there, and he cries out with relief. The Soldier is lurching toward them, ungainly and slow but moving, and it almost feels like Steve's the one moving it. The feeling of muscles flexing, of having a body - it's there, but it's not quite in sync with him somehow, like a tracing overlaid just slightly wrong. The Falcon's hands come up slowly and slam into Bardiel's arms, holding them by the wrists. The kaiju opens its jaws even wider, head tilting back with the force of its scream, and its body spasms as the shoulder plates of its jaeger-skin give way. Steve watches in horror as a pair of blood-slicked bones burst from the back of the kaiju like horrible wings, stretching and curving and finally bending into right angles with a sickening crack. The new arms plunge into the Falcon below the shoulders, where the bundle of nerves in a human body sits, and the Falcon's hands drop instantly back to its sides. The kaiju stands motionless for a moment, body heaving as it breathes, and then it puts its first set of hands back on the Falcon's head. The body of the jaeger jolts and shudders and then Bardiel simply collapses. Like a puppet with cut strings, it drops into the water, the resulting black-tinged wave slamming into Steve a moment later. The Falcon stands motionless for a moment and then turns.

"Steve, it's not-"

The hiss of static snows out Sam's next words as the Falcon starts to walk toward him. It moves carefully, like a baby deer, and something about it is dangerously wrong, but his mind is still so fuzzy and the Soldier is moving forward of its own accord.

"Steve, move! It's not-"

"What?"

The thought swirls lazily above his head, just above where he can reach, and he remembers he was almost underwater.

"Why didn't you let me go underwater?" he asks the empty cockpit. "Why-"

The Falcon punches him square in the face and oh, Christ, it hurts so bright and clean that it slices through the fog and he finally hears Sam's words and he knows that Bardiel is inside the Falcon.

Before he can even process this the Soldier lunges, using Bardiel's entry points as weak spots. Steve watches as the Soldier methodically disables all of the Falcon's weapons, safeguards, its wings. Bardiel hasn't had time to learn how to operate its new body but Fury, somehow plugged into him from afar, knows exactly how it works. Steve wonders distantly where the Spider is, wants to turn his head to look, but of course he can't, and so he watches. The Falcon is already leaking that strange blue-black combination of blood and poison, and he can't hear Sam anymore.

"Why can't I hear them?" he asks, not expecting a response.

"We cut off the audio," Fury answers, exertion in his voice. "Too distracting."

"Why?"

_because they're screaming_

"Sir, why?"

"Rogers, just sit tight and stop talking," he snaps. "This is extremely difficult and we've only got about a minute left before the jaeger fails-"

_because you're killing them_

"Sir-"

"Rogers, _shut up_ -"

The Soldier's hand comes up to the Falcon's - to Bardiel's - head and seizes it, digs its fingers in until the metal buckles and before he can shut his eyes they break its neck. He screams, knowing Fury has probably muted him, knowing there is nothing he can do. His right hand trembles uncontrollably and tears roll down his face and he screams. The Soldier's hand is still moving. It tears the Falcon's head off, plunges into its body and seizes the cockpit and the core behind it. Steve is begging now, begging for it to stop, to end, and the Soldier still moves, and he feels it in his own body when its fingers close into a fist and the metal crumples in its hand. He's still screaming when the Soldier collapses and he blacks out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you've seen the pledge, you've seen the turn. sorry again about all this. i would say i'll be back soon but we both know better than to accept those promises from me. i will be back, though, because i will finish this fic or die trying, but again, just, so sorry.


End file.
